It's hot. Not a breath of wind blows. The reinforced concrete walls are a Chinese wall in Padania land. Those infinite gray walls take your breath away, take your breath away, but they do not appease the environmental bugs that record every jolt in the headquarters of the mafia bosses, in the Opera prison, on the extreme southern outskirts of Milan. It is August 30, 2013.
The "beast" in the garden
The boss of bosses, "the beast", is buried there, waiting for the decision to tell the judges the criminal history of the last thirty years of the Bel Paese. He doesn't know it, but every time he looks out over that "garden of air", less than thirty square meters covered in mold and lichens, for less than an hour's walk, there are those who look at him and those who listen to him . The environmental interceptions in the records of the toughest trials, those of the massacres, from Capaci to via D'Amelio, are a milestone in the bond between the Corleonesi and the Trapani clan, those of Matteo Messina Denaro. The speaker is Salvatore Riina, the number one of Cosa Nostra, Totò for his "picciotti". Who listens to him live is Alberto Lorusso, fellow steps in the Opera bunker. Totò Riina doesn't walk, he shuffles his feet, as if to mark the time that was.
Recorded confession
The men of the Antimafia are recording it, as if the spontaneous declarations were a confession without appeal. It recalls the Totò of Corleone. It tells of mistakes and responsibilities, indicates the predestined to the succession, but at the same time marks its end. The recording of that wiretap is as clear as a mafia "de profundis". The slang is very strict, he speaks in Sicilian code, but the investigators translate it up to sighs. Riina recounts: «Now if his father, the good soul, were there, because the father was a good..., a good person, a nice person, uncle Ciccio was from Castelvetrano, however... I have to tell the truth, he spent many years in the "cumannamentu" in Castelvetranu until a judge gave him... But he was truly a person, who walked like...».
The heir of «Zuù Cicciu»
The «uncle Ciccio», the one in the story of the Capo dei capi is Francesco Messina Denaro, Matteo's father, «un bravu cristianu, un beddu cristianu zzù Cicciu». There is esteem and respect between the two, despite the fact that the two mandates, that of Riina, Corleone, and that of zzù Cicciu, Castelvetrano, were two separate, albeit contiguous, organizations. In reality, the supremacy of the Corleonesi is such that "zuù Cicciu" takes the big step: entrusting his son Matteo to the care of the "beast", the one destined to become the godfather of Cosa Nostra in the world. Riina tells it without frills in the interception nailed in the 1009 pages of one of the many sentences that "inflicted" on him 26 life sentences.
In all places shovels and light
It is the Godfather who speaks of Matteo Messina Denaro, the son of «Zuù Cicciu»: «This one here, this son who gives him to me to do with him..., to do with him what he had to do with him, he was four five years with me, he went well. Shit…, then he put on the shovel of the light, the shovel of the light shovels and light in all places. And it's over.., and it's over! And it's over! The light is gone…». It is the bloodiest passage of the separation between the Chief of Chiefs and his successor. A betrayal committed on the honor of the Mafia bosses destined, according to the rules of Cosa Nostra, to govern the fate of a criminal organization and not transform the "mandate" into a limited company to just go about their business.
Riina, the educator betrayed
In the ruling, the Judges interpreted the already explicit wiretapping: «Riina, making explicit reference to Francesco Messina Denaro, confided to the interlocutor that he had received from him the task of training his son Matteo who had been with him for four-five years . Riina, while using critical tones towards Matteo Messina Denaro who, after their acquaintance, had (in his opinion) inappropriately dedicated to the wind turbine sector, shows an evident disappointment of the Capo dei Capi for the choices made by the who, essentially, he considered his own protégé». He looks like a Totò Riina marathon runner, eleven steps forward and eleven steps back. Go up and down the shorter side of that patch of concrete covered only by the perennial fog. It is spontaneous, as if the confession about Matteo Messina Denaro were a burden on the conscience to be lifted before the end. Unhoped-for statements made by the Chief of Chiefs useful for reconstructing the time of the massacres, those entrusted to his most promising disciple. A choice, that of indicating him as his successor, which emerges again in the dialogues of a few days later, on 20 September 2013, again with his cellmate at the 41 bis of Opera. All interceptions related to the "Negotiation" process, the one between the mafia and the state.
"Light Poles"
In this last unconscious and spontaneous confession «Riina had confided to his fellow inmate his disillusionment with the behavior of Matteo Messina Denaro who, despite having excellent "criminal qualities", having been "instructed" by Riina himself, had no fully exploited the teachings received, preferring to devote himself to the wind energy sector ("light poles"), remaining safe abroad with his fiancée". The transcript of that interception is engraved in the recording tapes: "the only boy who he could have done something because he was straight... u patri buonu had had it, buonu was, the boy had had this school».
State-Mafia & wind
At the State-Mafia trial it is Salvatore Bonferraro, the substitute police commissioner in charge of analyzing the words and images captured by the bugs, who confirms the meaning of that confession: «Yes. At the time, Signor Messina to whom (Riina) was referring was certainly Messina Denaro Matteo, a fugitive (no longer for two days, ed.). The story he was referring to, the wind turbines. At that time, both Messina Denaro, together with Vito Nicastri, nicknamed the king of wind power in Sicily, were taking an interest in the area, especially the Trapani area, to put wind power. And therefore the story to which they were referring was precisely this one of the wind turbines, and the subject was Messina Denaro Matteo».
The inspector points out: «In this circumstance, Riina was very angry, also towards Messina Denaro Matteo, because at that moment, according to Riina, he was mainly engaging in economic activities... wind power...». The prosecutor pressed the inspector: "Was there such a Nicastri as a figurehead in the wind power sector?". The inspector is assertive: «Yes, he was arrested as a figurehead of Matteo Messina Denaro». The passage is crucial: the abandonment of Riina's massacre philosophy, the betrayal of the Cosa Nostra code and, above all, wind power, the new business frontier of Matteo Messina Denaro, U'Siccu. It is on the wind, from Trapani to Ploaghe, in the land of Sardinia, that business multiplies in the name of Cosa Nostra. A few years earlier the name of Vito Nicastri, an electrician from Alcamo, had sensationally hit the headlines: a pizzino found in 2007 in the Giardinello hideout of boss Salvatore Lo Piccolo, an iron ally of Bernardo Provenzano and Matteo Messina Denaro, reported the correspondence between the Palermo boss and the super-fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro. The words penned by Matteo Messina Denaro, in that pizzino that we reproduce are more than a contract: “Nicastro di Alcamo. Okay!". For Vito Nicastri it is the "consecration": according to the investigators, he is the man who builds wind farms with the blessing of the boss. , arrives in 2007. His name appears on a pizzino found in the hideout where the boss Salvatore Lo Piccolo was arrested.
In 2009, the first police operation against the nascent empire of Nicastri & C. leads to the seizure of one of the most impressive wind farms ever built in Sardinia, that of Ploaghe. Fifty-one towers placed in the proscenium of the Nuraghi valley and the Basilica of Saccargia. Even then a network of capitals emerged that bypassed the sea and the Alps, up to the tax havens of central Europe. In 2013, the most impressive blitz was triggered: 12 people, accused in various capacities of mafia-type criminal association, extortion and aiding and abetting, as well as fictitious ownership of assets, were arrested. Vito Nicastri also ends up in handcuffs, a well-known entrepreneur and considered the "king of wind power", the same as the Sardinian investigation, where he had already known his homeland prisons . The Prevention Measures section of the Trapani court confiscates an economic empire, the largest ever: one billion three hundred million euros, the 43 joint-stock companies that Nicastri used to manage his business in the wind sector and of the photovoltaic. The first instance trial sentences him to nine years in prison: the accusation is very heavy and financed the fugitive of Matteo Messina Denaro. In the second instance, the Court of Appeal halved his sentence, there would have been no external competition. The Cassation is not there. A few months ago the sentence: the trial will have to be redone. The highest Court upheld the appeal of the District Anti-Mafia Directorate of the Sicilian capital. There are still many passages of wind money to be explained. In a hidden villa in rue Jean-Pierre Beicht 226, Luxembourg, in Luxembourg, the investigators of the Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate have found the headquarters of a strange company that deals with wind energy. In recent years, the anonymous company has continued to receive wire transfers from a branch of Monte dei Paschi di Siena, coincidentally in Alcamo, in the province of Trapani, one of the strongholds of the Cosa nostra godfather. The wire transfers were branded Vito Nicastri, the "king of wind power". Including the Sardinian one, in the name and on behalf of Matteo Messina Denaro.
