The daughter of a late Mafia don famous for a mid-1970s career as an alleged stable manager at ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi's villa outside Milan was sentenced Wednesday to six years and four months in prison for criminal conspiracy.
Along with Cinzia Mangano, five others were sentenced to prison terms of up to eight years in a case involving money laundering and one that authorities suggested threw fresh light on Cosa Nostra's business clout in the affluent Lombardy region.
The court, however, emphasized the fact that the convictions were on "simple" criminal conspiracy and not Mafia association.
Cinzia Mangano's father Vittorio Mangano died of cancer in jail in 2000 while serving time for drug trafficking and facing a double-homicide rap.
Late anti-Mafia hero Paolo Borsellino had said he was a key figure in Mafia money laundering in northern Italy.
Both Berlusconi and the close aide who allegedly recruited Vittorio Mangano to protect the media magnate's family - ex-Senator and convicted Mafia associate Marcello Dell'Utri - have described him as a "hero" for not giving in to police pressure to say Berlusconi was linked to the Mafia.
At the time of her arrest, authorities said the probe involving Cinzia Mangano revealed an "entrepreneurial Mafia" acquiring commercial profits as well as illegal gains.
Those gains went to "an association that utilizes the strength of its criminal history and reputation...not to carry out exclusively and obviously illegal actions but to enter into the economic fabric of the assigned zone and gain economic benefit from it," Milan anti-mafia magistrate Stefania Donadeo wrote in the arrest order.
"The strength of Mangano's name alone was enough to intimidate" businesspeople, Donadeo said, adding that "physical violence wasn't required".
Investigators believe Cinzia Mangano and co-accused handled huge sums of money to support criminal fugitives and invest in new businesses.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
