Messina Denaro’s normal life: mafia boss personally buys car in Palermo

Last Updated: March 27, 2024

Combo with 8 photos or identikits of Matteo Messina Denaro. The first four (top row) are the latest available photos of him, all before 1993, the year he started his fugitive life. In the second row, the three identikits released respectively in 2007, 2011, and 2014 by law enforcement. The last photo was taken on the day of his arrest, January 16, 2023. ANSA

At November 2014, when he was the most wanted fugitive in the country, Matteo Messina Denaro personally went to a car dealership in Palermo to purchase a Fiat 500 and then to the bank to withdraw the check to deliver to the dealer. The boss used a fake ID card in the name of architect Massimo Gentile, who is now (March 27) arrested for mafia association, and indicated Leonardo Gulotta’s phone number as a contact for any communications. The facts, which once again show how the mafia boss led an almost normal life for years, emerge from the latest investigation by the Carabinieri’s ROS coordinated by the DDA of Palermo.

The investigation was initiated by a note found in the boss’s house after his capture, which read “10 thousand + 500 for Margot.” Margot was the alias Messina Denaro used to refer to his cars in notes or documents.

The search for the vehicle led the Carabinieri to a dealership in Palermo where the purchase of the car was documented with documents provided by the buyer, including a photocopy of the ID card in Gentile’s name with Messina Denaro’s photo pasted on it, proof that the boss had personally gone to buy the Fiat.

The document, signed by the godfather, contained some data corresponding to Gentile’s and others false: like the address listed as “via Bono,” not corresponding to the real address of the architect, and the expiration date. For the purchase, the mafia boss paid 1,000 euros in cash and 9,000 through a cashier’s check issued by the Palermo branch of Unicredit on Corso Calatafimi. At the counter, to receive the check, he presented the fake document, paid €9,000 in cash, and declared that the money was from his clothing merchant activity. Once again, the boss left Gulotta’s cell phone number as a contact, “a very trustworthy person perfectly informed about what was happening, otherwise anyone else unaware of the sale would have, at the first phone contact, alarmed the dealership and probably put the fugitive’s identification at serious risk,” the prosecutors wrote.

The car, used for the entire period of three years, was insured in Gentile’s name and in at least one year the insurance policies, as shown by graphical comparisons, bore Messina Denaro’s signature. The investigations also revealed that in 2007, the architect purchased a BMW motorcycle on behalf of the boss, which Gentile later brought to a workshop referenced in a note hidden in a chair found in the house of Messina Denaro’s sister, Rosalia, after the boss’s arrest. The vehicle, used by the godfather from 2007 to 2015, was regularly inspected and insured in Gentile’s name, who in one of the procedures indicated the false address of via Bono and provided Gulotta’s phone number as contact. The motorcycle and car permits, finally, in 2016 were paid within 40 seconds of each other at a tobacco shop in Campobello di Mazara where, seven years later, a few days before the arrest, the mafia boss went shopping, as shown by a receipt found by the Ros.