Sep 25 2008
Football seats reserved for Mafia bosses
Palermo — Italian Mafia bosses were given at least 100 free ticket to football games whenever Sicily’s professional team, Palermo, played at home, according to police prosecutors.
The seats were given to the Mafia bosses and divided among members of the Mafia ‘families’ of Palermo, reported Italian daily La Repubblica on Thursday.
Information about the free tickets emerged from prosecutors’ inquiries that led to the arrest of the lawyer of Salvatore Lo Piccolo, one of the most powerful Mafia bosses.
It is alleged that the tickets provided by the football team served as a sort of ‘protection’ racket or ‘pizzo’ and the bosses also pressured Palermo’s coach to use players who were protected by the Mafia bosses.
The aim of the Mafia was to progressively infiltrate the Sicilian team and eventually take control of it.
If somebody refused, threats would quickly arrive to the person putting ‘obstacles’ in the way. There have been claims that on one occasion the decapitated head of a goat with a gag in its mouth was sent to Palermo’s former sporting director, Rino Foschi.
The Italian daily claimed that on another occasion Mafia intermediaries wanted the team to sell a player to a foreign team for two million euros and split one million between Giovanni Pecoraro and Marcello Trapani, two important members and intermediaries of the Lo Piccolo clan.
Both Pecoraro and Trapani were recently arrested by Italy’s finance police and have been accused of extortion and Mafia association against the football team and its President, Maurizio Zamparini.
Trapani also allegedly invested up to eight million euros of Mafia money in construction companies located in the north of Italy.
Italy’s four main criminal organisations are the Sicilian Mafia, the Camorra in Naples and the surrounding Campania region, the ‘Ndrangheta in the southern region of Calabria, and the Sacra Corona Unita in the southern Puglia region.
Football seats reserved for Mafia bosses – AKI – 25 Sept. 2008 – This story was found at: http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Sport/?id=1.0.2512086101
