Views 81
The reasons for the conviction of Emanuele Bonafede and his wife Lorena Lanceri, alleged sutlers and supporters of Matteo Messina Denaro, have been filed.
Last January 12, the Court of Palermo sentenced Emanuele Bonafede, 50 years old, the third of the Bonafedes arrested by the Carabinieri, and his wife Lorena Ninfa Lanceri, 48 years old, with the code name “Diletta”, both from Campobello di Mazara, detained by 16 March 2023 and accused of having protected and favored the fugitive of Matteo Messina Denaro, above all by hosting him at their home for lunch and dinner, working, as lookouts, to ensure that he entered and left undisturbed.
The couple (she accused of mafia association and he of aggravated aiding and abetting failure to comply with the sentence) chose to be judged in summary form. The judge for the preliminary hearings of the Court of Palermo, Stefania Brambille, inflicted 13 years and 4 months in prison on Lorena Lanceri, and 6 years and 8 months in prison on Emanuele Bonafede. Now the judge has filed the reasons for the sentence. And among other things he wrote: “A relationship lasting years and not only of a personal and sentimental nature has linked Matteo Messina Denaro to Lorena Lanceri. The attentions of Lanceri – who together with her husband Emanuele Bonafede provided for the mafia boss’s needs, sorted his correspondence and monitored her safety – allowed the mafia boss to remain even physically in the mafia territory he directed. The relationship between the two dates back to long before the capture of Messina Denaro, at least to 2017, the year in which ‘lest’, one of the woman’s code names, already appears permanently in the monthly and annual expense reports of the mafia boss acquired during the investigations . It is therefore at least six years, a period of time in which Messina Denaro, thanks to the precious help of its protection network, of which Lanceri was part, managed to perpetuate its inaction by continuing to operate undisturbed in the Campobello area as the top of the mafia gang. These are behaviors that allow us to trace and reconstruct the typical contribution of the external competitor”.
And on the sidelines of the reasons signed by Judge Brambille, from the investigations of the Carabinieri del ROS and the Palermo Prosecutor’s Office it emerged that as a fugitive, wanted internationally, Matteo Messina Denaro spent at least one evening a week at the poker table. In the mobile phones seized from Lorena Lanceri, a WhatsApp group chat entitled “Pokerino beverino” was discovered, in which Messina Denaro under the name of Francesco Salsi and other people participated. In fact, regarding the name “Francesco Salsi”, husband and wife, Bonafede and Lanceri, told the Carabinieri, when they went to the barracks after the arrest of Messina Denaro: “We met the fugitive, ignoring his true identity: there is was introduced by a relative as a retired doctor named Francesco Salsi. We had sporadic contact with this man.” And as evidence that Bonafede and Lanceri, as Judge Brambille writes, would have known Messina Denaro since at least 2017, the investigation also emerges that 2017 is the year in which the boss was confirmation godfather to the Bonafede’s son, to whom she addressed him as “Godson”, and he replied “Parrino”. And the boss gave the couple 6,300 euros to buy the boy a Rolex. The watch was found in the Bonafede house: it was bought on 11 January 2017 at the “Matranga” jewelery shop in Palermo. And in Messina Denaro’s expense report we read: “6,300 gold”.
Angelo Ruoppolo (Teleacras)
