Italian police on Thursday
seized assets including a construction firm, a villa and 23
motor vehicles from a jailed cousin of fugitive Cosa Nostra No.1
Matteo Messina Denaro.
Police said the assets taken from detained construction
entrepreneur Giovanni Filardo were worth millions of euros.
Messina Denaro, now 53, has been on the run since 1993 and is
on Interpol's list of the world's 10 most wanted fugitives.
He has not been seen in public in over 20 years. An
informant in 2014 helped authorities update their facial
composite of the Mafia boss.
Last month a trial began in Caltanissetta in which he is
accused of being among those who ordered the 1992 bomb murders
of anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
Cosa Nostra mobsters turned State's witnesses Francesco
Geraci and Vincenzo Sinacori told investigators Messina Denaro
took part in a September 1991 Mafia summit to plan Falcone's
assassination.
Jailed boss of bosses Toto' Riina, who allegedly chaired that
summit, has already been convicted of ordering the hits on
Falcone and Borsellino.
Another former Mafia No.1, Bernardo Provenzano, who died in
jail last July, was also found guilty of commissioning the
murders.
Falcone was assassinated by a huge bomb under the
Palermo-Palermo airport highway at Capaci along with his wife
Franvesca Morvillo and three police escorts on May 23, 1992.
Borsellino was killed by a massive car bomb on July 19, 1992,
together with his five police escorts in the via D'Amelio near
his mother's home in Palermo.
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