The former mafia stronghold of Corleone in Sicily has called for the “swift removal” of a convicted mafioso resident and son of Italy’s most feared mobster, in a move to protect the town from “reputational damage”.
Giuseppe Salvatore Riina, 46, known as Salvuccio, who had been convicted and imprisoned for nearly nine years on charges of extortion, money laundering and mafia association, returned to his home town last April. He is the third-born of the Sicilian mafia’s boss of bosses, Salvatore “Totò” Riina, nicknamed the Beast, who died in prison in 2017.
A few weeks after his homecoming, the local government of Corleone, immortalised as a mafia stronghold by The Godfather book and film trilogy, voted in favour of a resolution demanding that Riina Jr leave the town as the community seeks to escape its mobster past.
“We want to send a loud and clear message once again: Corleone wants to leave behind its mafia past [behind], even by pushing away unwelcome fellow citizens, such as Salvuccio Riina who has never distanced himself from the despicable crimes of his father, Totò,” reads the resolution. “The reputational damage that the Riina family has caused to the city is serious and difficult to recover.”
The resolution was forwarded to law enforcement officers but the ultimate decision to remove Salvuccio rests with magistrates in the Sicilian capital, Palermo.
Totò Riina rose to power in the mid-1970s, when he became the de facto leader of the Corleone crime family. Sicily had become a hub for the heroin trade into the US following the Vietnam war, and Riina became fixated on the narcodollars that he saw flowing to his rivals in Palermo. His rise marked a new level of violence: not only did he assassinate his criminal rivals on an unprecedented scale in the 1980s and 90s, but also targeted the prosecutors, journalists and judges who sought to stand in his way. He is believed to have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people, including a 13-year-old boy who was kidnapped, strangled and dissolved in acid.
Totò formally remained the boss of the Sicilian mafia until the day he died in prison, in November 2017, while in a medically-induced coma following cancer treatment.
The late crime boss had four children: Maria Concetta, Giovanni Francesco, Giuseppe Salvatore, and Lucia.
His son Giovanni was only 19 years old when his father ordered him to strangle a kidnapped businessman in the countryside – a killing that would mark the boy’s formal entry into the Sicilian mafia, the Cosa Nostra. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1996.
In 2019, his daughter Lucia opened a restaurant near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris called Corleone, but shut it down the following year.
Salvuccio, convicted of mafia membership in 2004, lived in the north of Italy until his return last month. In 2016, he wrote a book entitled Riina Family Life, which sparked controversy in the country. Following its publication, signs appeared in store windows from Sicily to Milan advising customers that the book would not be found on the shelves inside.
