Word: nostrae
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When top Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano was captured in April after 40 years on the run, his hideaway in the Sicilian hills turned up none of the extravagance of Cosa Nostra's cinematic lore. No suitcases of cash, no jewels, nothing to match the popular imagination of the all-powerful godfather. Still, Italian police had no doubts that the square-jawed 73-year-old living in near squalor in an abandoned farmhouse had reigned over the very real-life affairs of Cosa Nostra's billion-dollar business of drug trafficking, high finance and cold-blooded murder. Provenzano, who had been...
...human contacts have been so innocent. The former radiologist is on trial for charges of allegedly aiding the Mafia. Investigators say the regional President tipped off an acquaintance that his conversations were being bugged by police in an ongoing probe into the network providing insider tips to Cosa Nostra's boss of bosses, Bernardo Provenzano. Cuffaro denies any wrongdoing or Mafia ties, and has refused calls by opponents to forego his run for a second five-year term. During an interview at his storefront Palermo headquarters - with some 25 aides and supporters crammed into his office to look on - Cuffaro...
...need to break with the past," Borsellino told Time. "We have a system based on pure political patronage that makes people think they have to go ask 'Please' for something that should be their right." She believes there is a fundamental link between low-level favor swapping and Cosa Nostra's firm hold on Sicily. "Patronage is illegality," she said. "The Mafia's relationship with the economic and political world has slowed development, and impoverished Sicily." Borsellino says her opponent's decision to run despite the Mafia charges "sends a very bad message" to Sicilians. Cuffaro, a longtime Christian Democrat...
...Sicilian Mafia's elusive capo dei capi, the boss of bosses, was run to ground just a mile west of the town of his birth, Corleone, a place made famous by the fictional protagonists in Mario Puzo's saga The Godfather. Provenzano had run the enormous La Cosa Nostra crime organization by way of messages on slips of paper, called pizzini, smuggled out from his hiding places over the years. But Cortese finally found him by following peripatetic packages of clean laundry from the home of Provenzano's wife in Corleone. Each delivery of clothing went from way station...
...with Provenzano as his No. 2. Riina was captured the same year and remains behind bars. Provenzano transformed the Mafia into a less violent, more economically efficient machine after Riina's bloody war with the Italian state in the 1980s and early 1990s put the squeeze on La Cosa Nostra...