Matteo Messina Denaro RIP

Now the enablers are feeling the heat

And so it rumbles on. Five more people have been sent down, or are about to be, by Sicilian judges for their association with the late Mafia boss Messina Denaro.

The surveyor Andrea Bonafede has been sentenced to fourteen years for the crime of associating with the Mafia, and more exactly, for lending his identity to the late boss. Messina Denaro was being treated in a cancer clinic under Bonafede’s name, and he had also at various times bought houses and a car pretending to be Bonafede, as you can read here (in Italian).

In Italy you cannot do anything, even buy a rail ticket or change cash, without an identity card, so it was very useful for Messina Denaro to have forged documents in the name of Bonafede. Forging these documents is not hard, I have been assured by people who claim to know.

Andrea Bonafede was presumably happy to help the head of the Mafia, being himself the nephew of a famous boss, Leonardo Bonafede. He was also the cousin of Laura Bonafede, who was Messina Denaro’s mistress. Keep it in the family. This lady, if the public prosecutors get their way, is looking at a fifteen year sentence, not of course for being his mistress, but for being his collaborator in crime. She is Leonardo’s daughter.

Also in the sights of the law is Doctor Alfonso Tumbarello, 71, a general practitioner, who has to explain why he was treating someone under the name of Andrea Bonafede when all along he knew the real Andrea Bonafede. He has a brilliant excuse, you will be glad to know. The fake Bonafede never turned up at the surgery but sent his cousin as he did not want anyone to know that he had cancer! This is slightly plausible, given that Dr Tumbarello, as a general practitioner, merely had to sign off various documents, write out prescriptions and give referrals, and so on, as all the hands-on treatment would have been done by specialists. ‘I had no idea that one of my patients had passed on his identity,’ the good doctor insisted in court. The fact that the patient in question avoided being seen might have been a clue…

Unfortunately for Dr Tumbarello, it seems he has a history when it comes to helping the Mafia as he facilitated a meeting between the boss’s brother Salvatore (then acting head of the Castelvetrano Mafia) and the former Christian Democrat mayor of Castelvetrano, Antonio Vaccarino. The doctor explained:

“Vaccarino asked me if I knew Salvatore Messina Denaro and if I could arrange a meeting. I knew Salvatore Messina Denaro because, as a pulmonologist, I had been asked to visit his sister-in-law, who was housebound. We fixed the day and time, and they came to my surgery. Since there was no one in the waiting room, Vaccarino asked me if they could talk there. It seemed bad to say no. I locked my room and left. I came back an hour later and there was no one there. Vaccarino, whom I had been seeing for a time for political reasons, did not tell me why he had wanted this meeting, nor did I ask him. I found out the reason, years later, from the newspapers.”

Again the lack of curiosity is staggering. The local Mayor asks for a discrete meeting place with the local Mafia boss, and you do not ask yourself why…

Doctors play an important role in the Mafia. Not only do they provide clandestine meeting places (the implication here was the this meeting was to set up a channel of communication with Matteo Messina Denaro, who was on the run) but they also provide medical paperwork for Mafiosi and secret medical treatment as well. If you turn up in hospital with a gunshot wound, the hospital will ring the police; but if you have your own doctor, he might be able to treat your privately. As in the UK, the GP is the gateway to lots of other services, so a ‘good’ GP will be invaluable.

The trial of Dr Tumbarello continues.