Europe-wide probe dismantles mafia financial network linked to Sicilian boss Messina Denaro

Italian anti-mafia prosecutors and financial police have seized assets worth more than €200 million in an international operation targeting a financial network linked to late Sicilian mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro.

The operation, coordinated by the Anti-Mafia District Directorate in Palermo and carried out by Italy’s Guardia di Finanza, led to the arrest of three people accused of laundering illicit funds with mafia aggravating circumstances.

Investigators said the assets were tied to profits generated through drug trafficking operations dating back to the 1980s under the leadership of Messina Denaro, the former head of the Sicilian mafia group Cosa Nostra.

Authorities said the investigation uncovered what prosecutors described as a vast criminal fortune reinvested through offshore companies and financial structures spread across multiple jurisdictions.

The inquiry involved cooperation between law enforcement and judicial authorities in several countries, including Andorra, Gibraltar, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Lebanon, Monaco and Spain.

According to prosecutors, the investigation began after authorities in Andorra flagged a woman originally from Campobello di Mazara in Sicily who held substantial financial assets in the country. Subsequent investigations linked her to a convicted narcotics trafficker with close ties to Cosa Nostra.

Palermo prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia said investigators believed they had identified “an important part” of investments accumulated by the Sicilian mafia over several decades.

He added that the total value of the seized assets remained provisional pending full assessments by foreign judicial authorities involved in the operation.

National anti-mafia prosecutor Giovanni Melillo described the operation as strategically significant, arguing that it went beyond confiscating criminal wealth and struck at attempts by Cosa Nostra to rebuild a unified organisational structure.

Melillo said the hidden financial reserves served as a guarantee holding together different factions within the mafia network. Removing those resources, he argued, was necessary to prevent the emergence of a renewed criminal structure capable of exerting economic and social influence on a global scale.

The operation forms part of continuing investigations into the network surrounding Messina Denaro, who was arrested in January 2023 after spending three decades as a fugitive and later died from cancer while in custody.

Palermo mayor Roberto Lagalla praised prosecutors and financial police for what he called an extraordinary operation against mafia-linked assets and international money laundering networks. He said the seizure demonstrated that anti-mafia investigations had continued with determination even after the arrest of the Sicilian boss.