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Italian mafia boss Messina Denaro ‘seriously ill’ following arrest

Doctors at the clinic where Italy's most-wanted fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro was captured said on Wednesday his health had recently deteriorated.

Published: 18 January 2023 15:27 CET
Italian mafia boss Messina Denaro 'seriously ill' following arrest
The Maddalena private clinic in Palermo where police arrested Matteo Messina Denaro after 30 years on the run. (Photo by Alessandro FUCARINI / AFP)

Messina Denaro, 60, a convicted killer known for a long series of brutal crimes, was caught during a visit to the clinic on Monday after 30 years on the run, after being forced to seek treatment for cancer.

“He is seriously ill. The disease has accelerated in recent months,” Vittorio Gebbia, head of the oncology department at the Maddalena clinic in Palermo, told newspaper La Repubblica.

READ ALSO: How Italy caught ‘most wanted’ mafia boss after 30 years

He underwent surgery for colon cancer in 2020 and 2022 under a false name, according to leaked medical records published in Italian media.

He was detained on Monday after detectives discovered through wiretapped conversations with family members that he was ill, and searched Italy for possible suspects of the right gender and age with cancer.

The law enforcement officers checked with Gebbia whether Messina Denaro needed urgent treatment.

“The police asked me if it mattered if the chemotherapy cycle he was set to receive was delayed by a few days, and I signed off on it because such a small delay will have no effect,” Gebbia said.

PROFILE: Ruthless Sicilian mafia boss Messina Denaro’s reign of terror

Messina Denaro was moved shortly after his arrest in Palermo to a high security prison in L’Aquila in the Abruzzo region, where he was being held in solitary confinement.

He was expected to be taken for chemotherapy treatment at the San Salvatore hospital in L’Aquila, which has a special unit reserved for this type of prisoner, according to reports in Corriere della Sera.

Messina Denaro was caught close to home after three decades on the run from police.

This is not unusual among Italy’s mafia fugitives, experts say, as on home turf they enjoy better protection and can continue to reign from the shadows.

“Going to state prison means failure for a mafioso. The mafioso wants to die in his own bed, not behind bars,” Italian journalist Attilio Bolzoni, a specialist on Italy’s criminal underworld, told AFP.

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CRIME

Italy has most recovery fund fraud cases in EU, report finds

Italy is conducting more investigations into alleged fraud of funds from the EU post-Covid fund and has higher estimated losses than any other country, the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) said.

Published: 8 April 2024 17:05 CEST
Italy has most recovery fund fraud cases in EU, report finds

The EPPO reportedly placed Italy under special surveillance measures following findings that 179 out of a total of 206 investigations into alleged fraud of funds through the NextGenerationEU programme were in Italy, news agency Ansa reported.

Overall, Italy also had the highest amount of estimated damage to the EU budget related to active investigations into alleged fraud and financial wrongdoing of all types, the EPPO said in its annual report published on Friday.

The findings were published after a major international police investigation into fraud of EU recovery funds on Thursday, in which police seized 600 million euros’ worth of assets, including luxury villas and supercars, in northern Italy.

The European Union’s Recovery and Resilience Facility, established to help countries bounce back from the economic blow dealt by the Covid pandemic, is worth more than 800 billion euros, financed in large part through common EU borrowing.

READ ALSO: ‘It would be a disaster’: Is Italy at risk of losing EU recovery funds?

Italy has been the largest beneficiary, awarded 194.4 billion euros through a combination of grants and loans – but there have long been warnings from law enforcement that Covid recovery funding would be targeted by organised crime groups.

2023 was reportedly the first year in which EU financial bodies had conducted audits into the use of funds under the NextGenerationEU program, of which the Recovery Fund is part.

The EPPO said that there were a total of 618 active investigations into alleged fraud cases in Italy at the end of 2023, worth 7.38 billion euros, including 5.22 billion euros from VAT fraud alone.

At the end of 2023, the EPPO had a total of 1,927 investigations open, with an overall estimated damage to the EU budget of 19.2 billion euros.

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