New blow to the network that protected Matteo Messina Denaro during his hiding.
The ROS carabinieri arrested the architect Massimo Gentile and the radiologist Cosimo Leone of the Mazzara del Vallo hospital for mafia association and Leonardo Gulotta for external complicity in the mafia association.
The investigation was coordinated by the Palermo prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia, the deputy Paolo Guido and the prosecutors Gianluca De Leo and Piero
Padova.
Since the capture of the boss on January 16, 2023, 14 people accused of helping the wanted mafia boss have ended up in handcuffs.
Four have already been convicted.
Originally from Campobello di Mazara, the town where Messina Denaro spent his last years on the run, Gentile lives in Limbiate, in the province of Monza, and holds an administrative position in the Municipality.
The suspect is a relative of Salvatore Gentile, a life prison killer, husband of Messina Denaro's historic lover Laura Bonafede.
According to the investigators, between 2007 and 2017, the architect gave up his identity several times to the wanted mafia boss, thus allowing him to purchase a Fiat 500 and a BMW motorbike, to take out insurance on the two vehicles, to carry out banking operations , "in short - the magistrates write - to live and move in its territory like an ordinary citizen and with an apparently regular identification document".
Cosimo Leone, Gentile's brother-in-law, is accused by the prosecutors of having guaranteed the fugitive boss, in November 2020, to have a CT scan of his chest and abdomen safely done, and of having given him a confidential mobile phone during his hospitalization in Mazara hospital del Vallo, in the days in which the mafia boss was operated on for colon cancer and for having had the CT scan CD delivered to him after his resignation to show to the specialists who were treating him.
Leone would therefore have been for Messina Denaro "as well as an indispensable intermediary with the outside during the entire period of hospitalization, also a very important point of reference within the hospital".
Finally, Gulotta is accused of having made his telephone number available to Messina Denaro between 2007 and 2017 in order to receive communications from the dealer of the Fiat 500 purchased under a false name and from the insurance agencies where the contracts had been stipulated. insurance policies for the car and motorbike purchased with Gentile's identity.
The normal life of the fugitive boss
In November 2014, when he was the most wanted fugitive in the country, Matteo Messina Denaro personally went first to a car dealership in Palermo to buy a Fiat 500 and then to the bank to collect the check to be delivered to the dealer.
The boss used a false identity card in the name of the architect Massimo Gentile, now arrested for mafia association, and indicated as the reference telephone number for any communications that of Leonardo Gulotta, who ended up in prison for external complicity in
mafia association.
The facts, which show once again how the mafia boss led an almost normal life for years,
emerge from the latest investigation by the ROS carabinieri coordinated by the Palermo DDA.
The input to the investigation comes from a note with the writing "10 thousand + 500 for Margot" found in the boss's house after the capture.
Margot was the pseudonym that Messina Denaro used to indicate his cars in pizzini or documents.
The hunt for the vehicle led the carabinieri to a dealership in Palermo where they found the document for the purchase of the car with the documents delivered
by the buyer, including the photocopy of the identity card in the name of Gentile on which it had been pasted the photo of Messina Denaro, proof that the boss had gone in person to buy the Fiat.
The document, which bore the godfather's signature, contained some data corresponding to that of Gentile and other false ones: such as the residence address indicated in "via Bono", not corresponding to the architect's real one, and the expiry date.
For the purchase, the mafia boss paid 1,000 euros in cash and 9,000 through a bank draft issued by the Palermo branch of Unicredit in Corso Calatafimi.
At the counter, to obtain the check, he showed the false document, paid 9,000 euros in cash and declared that the
money was the result of his activity as a clothing dealer.
As a telephone number for communications, the boss once again left Gulotta's cell phone "a very trustworthy person who was perfectly informed of what was happening, since otherwise anyone else unaware of the sale would have, at the first telephone contact, alarmed the dealership and probably put the identification of the fugitive is at serious risk", write the prosecutors.
The car, for the entire period of use - three years - was insured in the name of Gentile and in at least a year the policies, as shown by the graphic comparisons, bore the signature of Messina Denaro.
The investigations also revealed that in 2007 the architect purchased a BMW motorbike on behalf of the boss, which Gentile himself would later demolish in a workshop referred to in a small piece hidden in a chair, found in the woman's house. Messina Denaro's sister, Rosalia, after her godfather's arrest.
The vehicle, according to the prosecutors, used by the godfather from 2007 to 2015, was regularly inspected and insured in the name of Gentile, who in one of the procedures indicated the false residence in via Bono and always gave Gulotta's number as his address.
Finally, in 2016, motorbike and car taxes were paid within 40 seconds of each other in a tobacco shop in Campobello di Mazara
where, seven years later, a few days before the arrest, the mafia boss had gone to make purchases , as demonstrated by a receipt found by Ros.
Super efficient healthcare for the godfather
Tests carried out in record time, a very quick oncology visit, hospitalization and operation just eight days after the diagnosis of colon cancer received in November 2020: Matteo Messina Denaro was able to enjoy extremely efficient healthcare.
A suspicious diligence, that reserved for the boss who at the time used false documents, which the investigators are currently focusing on.
Today, Cosimo Leone, a radiologist from the Mazara del Vallo hospital, ended up in handcuffs, the first, investigators suspect, of a series of unsuspected pawns in the world of healthcare who helped the boss during his illness.
Leone, brother-in-law of the architect Massimo Gentile, also arrested today, would have taken care of having an urgent CT scan done by the mafia boss (CT, as shown by health documents, brought forward several times).
Furthermore, on the day of the exam, the technician asked to change shifts, making his presence in the hospital coincide with the diagnostic tests that the boss had to undergo.
Furthermore, according to the investigators, Leone would have constantly informed another supporter of the patient's condition, Andrea Bonafede, cousin and namesake of the surveyor who lent the boss his identity for treatment.
There were dozens of telephone contacts between the two in the days in which the mafia boss was in the Mazara hospital discovered by the police.
With painstaking work on the phone records, the investigators reconstructed the calls and, through the cells, the movements of the technician and Bonafede in the hot days of the diagnosis and colon surgery suffered by Messina Denaro.
From the analyzes it is clear that Bonafede gave the boss a cell phone while he was hospitalized.
We are in the midst of Covid and the technician was essential, given the ban on access to the hospital, as an intermediary with the mafia boss.
On November 14, therefore, at 1.30 pm Bonafede left Campobello and arrived about 15 minutes later in Mazara del Vallo near the hospital.
At 1.48pm he notified Leone, who was present in the hospital that morning, and gave him the new mobile phone.
After 15 minutes (around 2.00 pm), the technician gave the cell phone to the fugitive who immediately called Bonafede on his old number.
The
mission was therefore completed thanks to Leone, authorized to move around the departments, the only interlocutor that Bonafede could contact at that moment.
The device, further proof that Messina Denaro was using it and that someone inside the hospital had given it to him clandestinely, remained in the hospital for the entire 4 days of the boss's hospitalization.
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