Italy seizes gold, luxury villas and cash tied to Sicilian Mafia drug-trafficking gains

MILAN (AP) - Italian authorities have seized more than 200 million euros ($232 million) in assets linked to the late mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro's drug trafficking network, in what anti-mafia prosecutors described Thursday as a blow to the Sicilian Mafia's attempts to rebuild its financial power.

The seizures included more than 12 kilograms (26 pounds) in gold bars, millions in cash, premium watches and some 20 luxury properties, investigators told a news conference.

Messina Denaro died in a prison hospital some nine months after he was arrested in January 2023, ending three decades as a fugitive. He had been tried in absentia and convicted in dozens of murders, including helping to mastermind a pair of 1992 bombings that killed top anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

As part of the investigation into a decades-long drug-trafficking money trail linked, authorities arrested three people and ordered the seizure of assets, companies and financial holdings worth more than 200 million euros.

More than 150 Italian financial police officers carried out searches in Italy and abroad, including in Andorra, Gibraltar, the Cayman Islands, Switzerland, Lebanon, Monaco and Spain.

Italy's national anti-mafia prosecutor, Giovanni Melillo, said the seizures form part of a broader effort to dismantle the Sicilian Mafia's economic infrastructure and prevent it from rebuilding criminal networks capable of exerting global financial and social influence, including intimidation.