Word: nostrae
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...Cupola to solidify the Mafia's power structure after a leadership vacuum had followed from the high-profile earlier arrests of Bernardo Provenzano and Salvatore Lo Piccolo. Leading anti-Mob magistrate Pietro Grasso said operations over the past few years have the Sicilian Mob, also known as Cosa Nostra, on its knees. Tuesday's roundup, Grasso said, "keeps it from getting...
...heartland of the Italian island. (A boss who flees his home turf with a suitcase of cash is, on the other hand, considered a failure and possible traitor.) Of course, power and money feed off each other: Provenzano, for one, never stopped working to acquire wealth for Cosa Nostra, even if he couldn't spend it himself. Despite the blows to its leadership, the organization still generates billions of dollars of annual turnover in extortion, public-works contracts and drug-trafficking...
...arrest in 2006 of Riina's successor, Provenzano, left a potential battle for control. After the boss in line to take over, Lo Piccolo, was nabbed last year, Cosa Nostra decided it was time to reconstitute the Cupola for the difficult work of rebuilding the organization, authorities...
...then Sicilian boss of bosses Toto Riina. The bloodthirsty capo had killed dozens of their brothers, cousins, uncles and fathers in a mob war in the early 1980s, a conflict that cemented Riina's Corleone clan as the supreme rulers of Sicily's crime syndicate, also known as Cosa Nostra. Mafia experts say Riina was on his way to exterminating the rest of his rival clan when their American relatives and associates - including members of New York's Gambino family, of whom John Gotti, the infamous dapper don, was a member - intervened on their behalf. The ruthless Corleone leader...
Meanwhile, drug trafficking and international ties have been expanded by other Italian crime syndicates, notably the 'Ndrangheta of Calabria and the Camorra in the Naples area. At the same time, however, the Cosa Nostra was assaulted again and again by major Italian police crackdowns in the 1990s. Police believe that Salvatore Lo Piccolo, Provenzano's successor as Boss of Bosses, was trying to revive the Sicilian mob's fortunes by linking back up with American mobsters through the old Inzerillo connection. Lo Piccolo's arrest in November is believed to have brought more of the "Old Bridge" operation to light...