Nov 06 2007
Italian anti-Mafia official: Cosa Nostra’s ruling ‘cupola’ no longer exists
ROME: The Cosa Nostra’s notorious “Cupola,” or ruling commission of mob bosses, doesn’t exist anymore, Italy’s No. 1 anti-Mafia official said Tuesday in assessing the latest arrest of a top Mafioso.
“The ‘Cupola’ doesn’t exist any more. It has been demolished,” national anti-Mafia prosecutor Piero Grasso told reporters in Rome.
Grasso also gave more details on Monday’s raid on a fugitive mob boss’s hideout in the Sicilian countryside.
Arrested Monday was Salvatore Lo Piccolo, one of two convicted mobsters who investigators believed had been vying for control of the Cosa Nostra’s extortion rackets, drug trafficking, loan-sharking and other illegal activities across Sicily.
His reputed rival, Matteo Messina Denaro, whose crime clan is based in the Trapani area of western Sicily, remains at large.
Sicilian prosecutors say the Mafia’s hierarchy has been trying to overcome disarray in its ranks since the spectacular capture last year in Sicily of Bernardo Provenzano, the reputed “boss of bosses,” who had been a fugitive for more than 40 years.
During the raid near Corleone, Sicily, last year that netted Provenzano, police found extensive notes on the Mafia’s structure and businesses, written in code, that have since been largely cracked by investigators.
Provenzano in one of these notes, “said that all that was left of the ‘commission’” of Cosa Nostra was him, (Antonino) Rotolo and Lo Piccolo,” Grasso said. “We’ve arrested all of them.” Rotolo, considered to be Provenzano’s main aide, was arrested last year.
Thanks to surveillance, intercepted phone calls and Mafia turncoats, authorities have been chipping away at Cosa Nostra’s known hierarchy.
The “cupola” or commission was reputedly the top of a pyramid-like command structure which prosecutors contended masterminded slayings of judges, police officers, politicians and others in the 1970s and 1980s.
Italian anti-Mafia official: Cosa Nostra’s ruling ‘cupola’ no longer exists - The Associated Press - Published: November 6, 2007 - http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/06/europe/EU-GEN-Italy-Mafia.php
Does this mean the mafia is going down? I highly doubt it. I mean, of course an Anti-Mafia movement will take their time to shine now that Piccolo has been arrested.