Boss of Bosses (33 page)

Ciuro was the one with best access to information: he discovered that Giuffré was saying Aiello had paid out large sums of money to the Bagheria Mafia.

Aiello maintained he was a target for extortion, but prosecutors claimed the payments were part of a multi-million-pound healthcare scam. Realizing the operation was in danger of being uncovered, according to the prosecution, Aiello’s gang held a crisis meeting at which each was assigned a different task: Ciuro would look for information, using other people’s passwords, on the prosecutors’ system; Riolo would be an informal propagandist, softening attitudes in the justice department towards Aiello’s crimes. He had, in fact, thoroughly confused his roles: ‘I kept Aiello up to date with the investigation as if he was one of us, really.’

In the middle of June, Ciuro was intercepted calling Aiello at the clinic, saying he was going to Rome with Dr Ingroia to interview a collaborator who had ‘bad things’ to say about him, and he would let him know what they were. Ciuro’s colleagues began a secret investigation into his espionage activity. The operation was conducted under conditions of utter secrecy, since he was bound to find anything written or logged against him in the system, but if they denied him access to all material, he would be alerted that they knew what he was up to.

At the DIA the discovery of a traitor in their midst was disappointing, but no surprise. ‘We had always known that part of Cosa Nostra’s remit is constantly to find ways to infiltrate the judicial system,’ says Grasso, ‘so it wasn’t a surprise. We knew it was happening; the hard thing was to find out who, and where.’

They also discovered that, ironically, much of the time Ciuro was bluffing, inventing meetings and conversations to report to Aiello, to calm his mounting anxiety about the investigations in the hope of bigger rewards.

Since the group knew all their telephone calls were intercepted, Ciuro had the bright idea that they set up a restricted circle of mobile phones, registered to blameless individuals, on which they would only call the other three mobiles. If no one called one of the intercepted landlines from these phones, in theory, the restricted network would be impenetrable.

The plan worked splendidly for two months, until Ciuro’s wife, tidying up, found his mobile phone on his bedside table and used it to call him at his office. He was furious, since he’d already given her strict instructions never to use that phone. Agents listening to their conversation on the office line wondered why he should be so concerned about her using this particular mobile. They checked the number and found the phone was registered to one of his employees. Once they had that mobile under surveillance, they were able to intercept the other ‘restricted’ phones.

For two weeks detectives listened to the gang of four talking openly, several times a day, discussing the progress of their efforts to access information on the investigations. They talked about the health scam and about the fugitive Trapani boss Matteo Messina Denaro. His fiancée, Maria Mesi, had already been arrested once for aiding and abetting. Her sister Paola was Aiello’s secretary. Cameras were even trained on Paola Mesi’s house in Bagheria by investigators hoping the Trapani boss, Messina Denaro, might pay an unsolicited visit. Borzacchelli allegedly, drove by with a scanner to check if the cameras were on.

While detectives were uncovering private health fraud, another investigation was under way, into the Mafia’s infiltration of politics.

Giuseppe Guttadauro had only recently been released from prison,
and yet, in the run-up to the elections in 2001, his grand Palermo villa had been the meeting place for mafiosi, politicians and opinion formers, who would drop by to discuss the latest developments on the campaign. One of the candidates standing for the regional elections was the leader of the newly formed centre-right party the UDC, the big, blustering political heavyweight Salvatore Cuffaro. He and the stick-thin millionaire Michele Aiello were old friends, and Aiello was financing the party, which had swept up the remnants of the old Christian Democrats.

Investigators instructed the carabinieri to place a number of bugs in Guttadauro’s elegant sitting-room. Guttadauro had acquired some of Provenzano’s attention to security: he had bought an electronic wand for detecting bugs. He had not yet learned how to use it, but as it turned out, he did not need to. The officer chosen to the install the bugs was Giorgio Riolo, the expert technician with a weakness for publicizing his work.

One of Guttadauro’s most frequent visitors was Mimmo Miceli, an ambitious young Palermo councillor who had good links with Cuffaro and was hoping to get a seat on the regional parliament. The two men discussed issues of burning importance to Cosa Nostra: candidates for regional elections and hospital directorships, development plans for new shopping centres. The most pressing issue for Guttadauro was to improve prison conditions for convicted mafiosi. He needed to find a political contact who would start the ball rolling on changing the anti-Mafia laws. He confided to Miceli: ‘I need to create a relationship with Cuffaro, via you . . . if he responds, and offers us some guarantees, it won’t go any further.’

Miceli promised to pass the message on to Cuffaro, but word never came back. (Cuffaro was recently cleared of accusations that he had done any favours for the Mafia.)

Just days before the election the agent on duty suddenly heard shouting, as a row broke out at the Guttadauro house. The bugs had been discovered.

On the evening of 24 June, Cuffaro hosted a dinner at the Richard III restaurant on the hillside above Monreale in anticipation of the party’s victory. The guests ate swordfish carpaccio and fresh tuna, beef
steaks and slabs of fresh tomatoes in the warm summer air, drinking golden Sicilian wine, looking down over Palermo’s Golden Basin. But not everyone was having a good time. After the meal Miceli motioned one of his associates to step outside with him for a moment and broke the news that Guttadauro’s place had been bugged.

Agents back at the ROS were wondering how they had found out. At the DIA Ciuro continued his undercover work. He discovered that one investigation was looking into the connection between Aiello and Cuffaro. By the end of the year Guttadauro was back in prison, charged with Mafia association. Miceli was arrested the following summer. At the same time, a formal investigation was launched into Cuffaro’s role in the leaks of information.

Riolo kept busy playing hide-and-seek, planting bugs in cars and houses, and informing the owners that they should take a look around. He learned about a bug in an Opel belonging to one of Provenzano’s top managers in Bagheria and let Aiello know it was there. The bugs, which had been recording highly incriminating conversations, were located and quickly removed.

By the summer of 2003 Riolo was suffering from acute anxiety. He had so thoroughly abused his position of trust that it would be only a matter of time before he was found out. He was in such a state of fear that Borzacchelli allegedly put out feelers to see if his friends could not give Riolo a cheque big enough to calm his nerves and make the risk worth his while.

When the region adjusted the tariffs that would fix the repayments for highly specialist radiotherapy treatment, Cuffaro and Aiello had long discussions about the tariff levels. Aiello’s clinics stood to earn millions from the state health pay-outs, but they had other urgent matters to discuss. At the end of October they made an appointment at a clothes shop in Bagheria. Cuffaro dismissed his armed escort and let Aiello know that he was under no circumstances to tell anyone where he was going or whom he was meeting. During their thirty-minute tryst in the shop, as they examined jackets and felt the thickness of collars and cuffs, Cuffaro told Aiello he had heard Ciuro and Riolo were under investigation. He had got the news ‘from Rome’ – that is, from government contacts. (This was the version of events
Aiello gave magistrates under questioning. He later denied that they had talked about any investigations, saying his ill-health had muddled him.)

Cuffaro later denied revealing any news about the investigation, claiming they had met merely to discuss the private health tariffs – a significant matter for a politician responsible for a black hole in the region’s health budget.

On the evening of 4 November, Ciuro was alarmed to see that an urgent meeting had been called between magistrates and the director of the police organized crime unit and rang a friend at the DIA to find out what it was about. His colleague (as directed) gave him a reassuring answer. ‘OK then,’ Ciuro replied, ‘I can go and eat my dinner in peace, because they won’t be arresting me this evening.’

His optimism was misplaced. Ciuro was arrested the following morning, along with Riolo and Aiello. Aiello was charged with being a front man for Bernardo Provenzano; Riolo and the others with aiding and abetting a fugitive. Three months later Deputy Borzacchelli was also arrested. The trial of the mafia’s ‘moles’ was a massive operation, which resulted in convictions for Aiello (14 years for mafia association) and Riolo (7 years). Cuffaro was convicted of revealing official secrets, however the judge ruled that his actions benefited individual mafiosi, not the organization. After a fast-track trial Ciuro was convicted of aiding and abetting; at the time of writing Borzacchelli is awaiting the judges’ verdict.

‘I’m so ashamed of my disgraceful conduct’, Riolo confessed in court. ‘I feel utterly contemptible. I let myself be drawn into a world of power games, money and crime which has nothing to do with me. I stupidly believed I could do my job and still be able to use my contacts to build myself up and curry favour with important people.’

He claimed that he had done it all for
protagonismo
, to make himself the centre of attention – but the car, and the money, spoke for themselves.

‘The trial of the spies in the institutions gave us an insight into how deep and pervasive Cosa Nostra’s contacts were, throughout the system’, the prosecutors wrote. ‘Unusually we have seen evidence of relationships between a defendant accused of Mafia association (Michele Aiello) and one convicted of the same crime (Giuseppe
Guttadauro) with politicians of the highest level, with businessmen, professionals and journalists, with employees and directors of public administration, with people who work in the prosecutor’s office and with members at every level of seniority of the police force.’

In the judges’ motivation for the sentence against the politician Mimmo Miceli, published in May 2007, they reiterated that Miceli, as Palermo’s local minister for health, was the go-between for the mafioso Giuseppe Guttadauro and the president of the region, Salvatore Cuffaro. Cuffaro remains under a separate investigation for aiding and abetting the mafia.

After the round-up of Provenzano’s informers, investigators discovered there were other shadowy officials in Cosa Nostra’s pay, passing him news about plans for his capture, helping him keep one step ahead of arrest. While investigators were on high alert for leaks, at least one other attempt to arrest him would be scuppered by ‘the good Lord Jesus Christ’, the spy in the system.

P
ROVENZANO’S HEALTH PROBLEMS
, which had been troubling him for some time, were becoming urgent. Ever attentive to his failing body, he needed to see a doctor with increasing regularity, and his letters were full of arrangements for clandestine medical appointments.

Visits to private clinics had to be arranged, analyses of bodily fluids had to be organized; at some stage he had an operation. In April 2001 his loyal friend Pino Lipari wrote, in one of the more unlikely descriptions of the Boss of Bosses, ‘Our kitten has been unwell . . .’.

Lipari had everything prepared; an ambulance was ready. His wife was going to go along, pretending to be the sick man’s companion. But there was a last-minute cancellation, as so often happened; the doctor couldn’t make a consulting room safe for a high-level fugitive to visit without arousing suspicion, and Provenzano was back in his old refuge, managing his symptoms with diet and drugs.

After their galling near miss when they followed a doctor and arrested the ‘wrong’ patient, the police were taking no chances. They followed leads to urology departments all over Italy and further afield. An agent from the Catturandi went to London after receiving intelligence that one of Provenzano’s relations was booked in for prostate treatment in a private London clinic. The Sicilian pensioner in his private room was extremely surprised to receive a visit from the police – but he was not the fugitive Boss.

Following the arrest of so many of Provenzano’s closest associates, he was thrown back on his oldest allies. Ciccio Pastoia, an old-school mob boss who had moulded himself in Provenzano’s image, had become capo of Belmonte Mezzagno after Spera’s arrest, with Provenzano’s
support. Now he took on the Boss’s day-to-day management. He got in touch with his godson Nicola Mandalà, the womanizing, coke-snorting, gambling king of Villabate. Two men more different in style one couldn’t imagine, but Uncle Binnu needed them, and together they took on the difficult task of managing Provenzano’s life in hiding.

As Provenzano’s spokesman, Pastoia contacted capos all over western Sicily, organizing his postal system and letting his will be known. ‘Pastoia became Provenzano’s alter ego’, says prosecutor Michele Prestipino. ‘He was the closest in character to Provenzano. The others had delusions of grandeur, they were power-crazed. Provenzano, and Pastoia, to a degree, were the opposite: they had this ostentatious modesty. Pastoia was capable of great self-sacrifice; he could operate behind the scenes, let someone else be the boss, but he was by no means powerless.’