Operation by the Dia of Trapani which seized movable and immovable assets and company shares for a total value of one million from an agricultural entrepreneur, convicted with a final sentence also for 416-bis, and belonging to the Vita mafia family. The seizure decree was issued by the Court of Trapani.
The entrepreneur was involved, among others, in the criminal proceedings resulting from the Pionica operation and which concerned the mafia families operating in the Trapani municipalities of Salemi and Vita. An operation carried out in 2018 and which led to numerous precautionary measures including that against the entrepreneur from Vita involved today, who was sentenced to 12 years.
The seizure was adopted after some asset investigations carried out by the Operational Section of the Dia of Trapani, which demonstrated “the disproportion between the assets attributable to the defendant and the income declared by them, for a total value of approximately 1 million euros”.
The Pionica operation takes its name from a district of Santa Ninfa where there is a 60-hectare company belonging to Giuseppa Salvo, from Salemi. According to the accusation, Michele Gucciardi and Melchiorre Leone, Vita’s agronomist, first discouraged possible buyers of the company and then, after Roberto Nicastri from Alcamo, brother of the wind power king, bought it at auction for 130 thousand euros to resell it for 530 thousand euros to the Vieffe of Vivirito and Ficarotta from Palermo, who claimed the rights to replant the vineyards for the latter. The so-called land registers, which Salvo could have sold and with the proceeds paid the company’s debts and maintained ownership of the land. Thanks to those land registers Vieffe obtained two community loans: one of 420 thousand and the other of 120 thousand euros.
