average of 3.3 per cent of the revenue collected, in Sicily the Salvos got away with keeping 10 per cent of the money they had amassed. They were also allowed to hold on to the actual revenue for inordinately long periods, thus effectively enjoying huge interest-free loans.
This is how they were able to become leading landowners, hotel operators, wine producers and real estate developers in Sicily. They were active within the party, and in all likelihood gave certain Christian Democrat leaders large private donations. The Salvos were also able to deliver a significant number of votes to party candidates in their home town. And the party gave things in return. One of the most notorious examples was the La Zagarella hotel just outside Palermo. At 1970s prices, it cost $15 million to build, but the Salvos put up just $600,000 of their own money. The rest came from public funds, controlled by the Christian Democrats. Fittingly, this was the hotel where the dominant party in government and their associates held their luxury receptions and weddings. It was also where they staged their big political meetings, at which they would invite seven-times Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti. For slightly more intimate parties, they kept a 26-metre yacht moored in Palermo harbour, aboard which were paintings by Van Gogh and Matisse.
Then there was the huge estate of thousands of acres near the town of Gela, and according to a supergrass:
They transformed it without spending a penny of their own money. They got loans from banks, then they did the paperwork to exploit that EU law, and got the money back they had been loaned . . . Just imagine, they diverted a river and got it to pass through this big wine grove, creating six or seven small artificial lakes. Then they installed some huge pumps which irrigated the entire estate with water from the lakes. And these lakes were no joke: Nino drove me around them in a jeep and boasted that the whole operation was the apple of his eye. And he hadn’t paid a thing.
Back in the early 1960s police reports were already describing the Salvo cousins as Mafiosi who were sons of Mafiosi , but they had reached such a level of wealth, power and respectability that they had become untouchable.
Apart from drug running, for people such as Badalamenti this is where the big money could be made – getting contracts and grants from public funds. This meant rubbing shoulders with the great and the good. After all, rich people who are corrupt need someone important to recycle or look after their money. In this period most top Mafiosi had their companies registered at the offices of Giuseppe Mandalari, who had been a parliamentary candidate for the fascist MSI party in 1972.
The other great institution and power broker in Italian society was the Church. The supergrass Antonino Calderone recalls that at the end of the 1960s Badalamenti invited him to lunch in Cinisi. The reason was to ask whether he could hide Luciano Leggio, but as he put the question a priest walked in, and Badalamenti immediately introduced him to the others as a ‘man of honour’, a Mafioso . This was Agostino Coppola, parish priest of Carini, a town on the other side of Mount Pecoraro, and cousin of top US mobster Frank ‘Three Fingers’ Coppola.
Agostino Coppola had his uses, such as christening children and performing wedding services for notorious gangsters on the run, such as Totò Riina’s marriage in 1974 – a few years later Riina became leader of the Mafia, a position he held until his arrest in January 1993. But Coppola also had a more earthly importance, such as acting as a go-between and negotiator; on more than one occasion such a respected member of the community picked up a ransom payment during a Mafia kidnap. The fact that he was seen more than once at Mafia summits in Milan showed that he was far more than just a convenient cover or courier – he was a senior and active Mafia member. On the other side of Mount Pecoraro,
This is how they were able to become leading landowners, hotel operators, wine producers and real estate developers in Sicily. They were active within the party, and in all likelihood gave certain Christian Democrat leaders large private donations. The Salvos were also able to deliver a significant number of votes to party candidates in their home town. And the party gave things in return. One of the most notorious examples was the La Zagarella hotel just outside Palermo. At 1970s prices, it cost $15 million to build, but the Salvos put up just $600,000 of their own money. The rest came from public funds, controlled by the Christian Democrats. Fittingly, this was the hotel where the dominant party in government and their associates held their luxury receptions and weddings. It was also where they staged their big political meetings, at which they would invite seven-times Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti. For slightly more intimate parties, they kept a 26-metre yacht moored in Palermo harbour, aboard which were paintings by Van Gogh and Matisse.
Then there was the huge estate of thousands of acres near the town of Gela, and according to a supergrass:
They transformed it without spending a penny of their own money. They got loans from banks, then they did the paperwork to exploit that EU law, and got the money back they had been loaned . . . Just imagine, they diverted a river and got it to pass through this big wine grove, creating six or seven small artificial lakes. Then they installed some huge pumps which irrigated the entire estate with water from the lakes. And these lakes were no joke: Nino drove me around them in a jeep and boasted that the whole operation was the apple of his eye. And he hadn’t paid a thing.
Back in the early 1960s police reports were already describing the Salvo cousins as Mafiosi who were sons of Mafiosi , but they had reached such a level of wealth, power and respectability that they had become untouchable.
Apart from drug running, for people such as Badalamenti this is where the big money could be made – getting contracts and grants from public funds. This meant rubbing shoulders with the great and the good. After all, rich people who are corrupt need someone important to recycle or look after their money. In this period most top Mafiosi had their companies registered at the offices of Giuseppe Mandalari, who had been a parliamentary candidate for the fascist MSI party in 1972.
The other great institution and power broker in Italian society was the Church. The supergrass Antonino Calderone recalls that at the end of the 1960s Badalamenti invited him to lunch in Cinisi. The reason was to ask whether he could hide Luciano Leggio, but as he put the question a priest walked in, and Badalamenti immediately introduced him to the others as a ‘man of honour’, a Mafioso . This was Agostino Coppola, parish priest of Carini, a town on the other side of Mount Pecoraro, and cousin of top US mobster Frank ‘Three Fingers’ Coppola.
Agostino Coppola had his uses, such as christening children and performing wedding services for notorious gangsters on the run, such as Totò Riina’s marriage in 1974 – a few years later Riina became leader of the Mafia, a position he held until his arrest in January 1993. But Coppola also had a more earthly importance, such as acting as a go-between and negotiator; on more than one occasion such a respected member of the community picked up a ransom payment during a Mafia kidnap. The fact that he was seen more than once at Mafia summits in Milan showed that he was far more than just a convenient cover or courier – he was a senior and active Mafia member. On the other side of Mount Pecoraro,
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