According to the Dutch Politie, in today's early morning hours, around 3:45 am an alarm sounded which alerted them that, a burglar or burglars robbed the The Princessehof Ceramics Museum in the city of Leeuwarden in the Netherlands.

This is the second of two attempted break-ins in 2023, the first being unsuccessful, two weeks ago, on February 1 before 6 am. 

The perpetrator or perpetrators is today's theft are believed to have accessed the galleries inside the museum after entering via the roof of the building.

The Princessehof Ceramics Museum is known for its extraordinary ceramics, with objects representative of European, Middle Eastern and Asian ceramics making up parts of the collection. 

According to the museum a total of eleven objects from a Chinese ceramics installation were stolen during the burglary, seven of which were destroyed with abandoned or droped during the escape.  Dutch news sites are reporting that the  abandoned material, presumed to have been removed from the museum, was found in the Doelestraat, close to the museum. 

This is not the first incident of Chinese material being brazenly stolen from museums across Europe and the UK. The first recorded incident in a spate of thefts occurred in Stockholm at the Chinese Pavilion on the grounds of Drottningholm Palace in 2010.  Despite police arriving on the scene in just 14 minutes, thieves still managed a quick smash and grab, escaping with Chinese imperial seals and vases.   

Next, that same year, thieves hit in Bergen, Norway, where, like in today's theft, the burglars entered the building from the roof, with the intruders rappelling down from a glass ceiling into the KODE Museum.  In that theft, the burglars made off with 56 objects from the museum's China Collection. 

Crossing over the pond, another incident occurred at the Oriental Museum at Durham University, in 2012 when an 18th-century jade bowl and a Dehua porcelain figurine, worth an estimated £2m were stolen in a well-planned heist that investigators believe to have been a theft to order.   That same month burglars struck again, stealing a dozen objects from the Fitzwilliam Museum worth an estimated £15m, including artefacts from the Ming and Qing dynasties, a jade 16th century carved buffalo, a carved horse from the 17th century, a green and brown jade carved elephant.

Then the KODE Museum was struck again in 2013, where despite a heightened awareness to the recurring thefts of Chinese material, thieves still managed to grab another 22 objects in porcelain, jade, bronze and paper from the Norwegian museum, adding further insult to injury.  In 2015, this time striking in France, in a lightening raid that lasted just seven minutes,  thieves stole 22 objects from the Chinese Museum that houses works once belonging to Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III at the Château de Fontainebleau.  In that theft, thieves made off with a Chimera in cloisonné enamel, a mandala made of coral, gold, and turquoise, porcelain vases, and other rare items.  In 2018 another 40 Chinese artefacts, including ceramics, jade, and gold pieces, were stolen from the Museum of East Asian Art in Bath, in southwest England.

For now, the Princessehof Ceramics Museum in the Netherlands will remain closed until February 21st to allow the police to conduct their investigation.  Eye witnesses or those with camera footage from the area of ​​the Grote Kerkstraat are asked to contact the local law enforcement authorities. 

The site of Chavín de Huantar

What we know about the monumental ruins of Chavín de Huantar, thousands of feet up in the Cordillera Blanca, the Andean highlands of Peru, is spartan.  Here, members of a pre-Inca culture, left us with what archaeologists believe to be a temple complex, consisting of a maze of ruined granite and sandstone structures – or step pyramids, cyclopean walls, and wonderful carved sculptures which date from around 1000 BCE. 

Already mentioned in the sixteenth-century chronicles of Pedro Cieza de León, the site of Chavín de Huantar, is located kilometers north of Lima.  It's unique architecture resulted in it being declared a World Cultural Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1985.  

Distinct, not only for its massive flat-topped pyramid temple, but also for what archaeologists call its "cabezas clavas," more commonly called temple nail heads.  These front-facing, pumpkin sized heads, were architectural elements, and were usually carved from volcanic tuff and made to resemble zoomorphic faces.   Used as decoration, they were positioned horizontally and equidistant from each other along the temple walls. 

Usually, these nail heads, carved with open eyes, closed mouths, crushed noses, and contracted muscles. When found intact, they also have an elongated stone extension bracket on the back.  This wedge was used to insert the sculptural element, like a nail, into the structure's wall, hence the name they were given.  Many of the Chavín de Huantar nail heads were originally positioned along the south, east, and west façade of the Chavín temple, garnishing the building in a horizontal row and positioned evenly under the temple's carved stone cornices.   

Some 42 nail heads were originally recorded and identified between 1919 and 1941 by Julio C. Tello, America's first indigenous archaeologist.  Most of which were lost in the aftermath of a 1945 flood that covered the archaeological site.  Others have been lost to looters. 

Over time, as many as 100 complete or almost complete nail heads, discovered after 1950, have been found and preserved from the Chavín culture, with almost all of those accounted for coming from official excavations.  These, are now part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of Chavín.  Sadly, only a single original nail head remains in situ. 

Yesterday, in a ceremony conducted at the Swiss customs office, Basel/Weil am Rhein-Autobahn, the president of the Office fédéral de la culture (OFC), Carine Bachmann, returned a smuggled nail head to Peru's Ambassador HE Luis Alberto Castro Joo.  According to the OFC, this ancient architectural element, which weighs in at nearly 200 kilograms, was discovered by Swiss customs officials during a routine customs control check conducted in 2016 of a courier transporting the object from Germany into Switzerland.

Suspicious of the statements declared by the freight forwarder, who had tried to introduce the artefact into Switzerland as a "non-cultural good," and therefore not subject to specific heritage laws, employees of the Federal Office for Customs and Border Security - BAZG,  stopped the object's entry to examine it more closely.  Over time, and with the assistance of heritage experts, the Swiss authorities came to the conclusion that the artefact was, in fact, unregistered cultural property and moved for the artefact's seizure in accordance with the Cultural Property Transfer Act.

Shortly thereafter,  during a cantonal criminal proceeding, an order of confiscation was entered by the Basel public prosecutor in 2017.  This in turn allowed the artefact to be eventually restituted to the Government of Peru in the formal ceremony held yesterday.  

The alleged primary brokers and handlers of these artefacts include France-based art broker Christophe Kunicki, Hamburg-based art dealer Roben Dib, and Dib's business partner Serop Simonian, an art dealer of Armenian origin, born in Egypt, who also resides in Germany. 

Suspected of playing a central role in the sale of illegally excavated antiquities, Christophe Kunicki and Richard Semper were taken into custody on June 22, 2020 and charged with with gang fraud and money laundering. Both were released from French custody on June 26, 2020, with judicial supervision orders pending their trial outcome.  

Suspected by US and French authorities of playing a central role in the sale of suspect antiquities to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Roben Dib, a director at Dionysos Ancient Coins & Antiquities was taken into French custody in March 2022, shortly after posting a €600,000 bail in Germany. 

Held in pretrial detention for seven months at the Centre pénitentiaire de Fresnes, Val-de-Marne, south of Paris, Dibs is released from French custody in October 2022 with an order of judicial supervision pending trial, alongside an additional €350,000 French bail condition.  Dibs was rearrested on January 10, 2023, and brought before a judge, who released him the same day with a stern advisory, that if the outstanding balance of his French bail requirement was not paid in full, he would again be subject to pre-trial detention. 

Today, the Investigating Chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal rejected both Martinez and Charnier's defence counsels requests to lift the “mise en examen” (the indictment by the investigating judge in the context of a judicial investigation) and confirmed that both the former president of the Louvre and the former scientific director remain under indictment.  Martinez has been indicted for laundering and complicity in organised fraud.  Charnier has been indicted for laundering by facilitating the false justification of the origin of the property of the author of a crime, or a misdemeanour, and placed under judicial control." 

Through their lawyers, both Martinez and Charnier have indicated they will appeal today's court decision.  Both remain free on judicial supervision while their case proceeds through the French court.

The OCBC's investigation built upon collaborative investigations with the New York County - Manhattan's Antiquities Trafficking Unit, who first unravelled the network of traffickers during their investigation into the illicit trafficking of the ancient gold mummiform coffin, inscribed in the name of Nedjemankh.  Like in the New York case, the French case centers on artefacts which were laundered by means of falsified documents, in particular false invoices and export licenses.

«Con il traffico di opere d'arte ci manteniamo la famiglia.»

"With the trafficking of works of art we support our family."  So read a purported intercepted pizzini, stated to have been written by Cosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro to one of his men.

Pizzini, literally little messages, are generally codified messages which represent the orders, thoughts and concerns of the mafia's men in power. Provenzano for instance, was known to write his on a small typewriter, folding and taping them into tiny squares, so that he could communicate his orders among the uomini d'onore through these tiny secret messages while on the run as a mafia fugitive.

When captured and deciphered by law enforcement, pizzini like these can serve as evidence, paper accomplices, which like informants, give concretised clues on mafia operations and in some cases, outlining specific orders given in the commission of crimes by clan bosses. 

News of this leaked message was first published in a 2021, in a Huffington post article by Vincenzo Musacchio, a Jurist and Professor of Criminal Law.  It is now making the airwaves again, following Messina Denaro's arrest.

But even if this pizzini turns out to be real evidence, proven to have been written by Messina Denaro, it merely confirms what we already know.  

The trafficking of art as a form of "currency" has already been concretised through other well known organised crime cases in Italy.  One of the more dramatic examples, a few years back, is that of Camorra clan boss, Raffaele Imperiale, who held on to two Van Gogh paintings, first stolen in Amsterdam and later recovered at a property connected to him in the Bay of Naples.

While both were potent actors in Italy's organised crime syndicates, Imperiale and Messina Denaro are not the only mobsters who have used art for illegal means. The art market is a global one, allowing for easy movement of assets across borders. 

Art and antiquities are attractive financial instrument, especially for the underworld, as it can be used by criminals as a means of concealing the proceeds derived from illicit activities.  This can also include purchasing legitimate works of art with dirty money, selling it at a later date for a profit and thereby "washing" the money so that it appears that the funds come from a legitimate, and now more traceable, source. 

Criminals may also use art and antiquities as a means of transferring large sums of money across international borders, as art is not subject to the same regulations and scrutiny as financial banking transactions. 

Art and antiquities can also been used as collateral for underworld loans, or when the location of stolen material is disclosed during plea deals, may sadly serve as a bargaining chip used by charged offenders as a means of negotiating lower prison sentences, as we have just seen in Germany this week.

What comes out publicly in the Messina Denero investigation, related to art and antiquities crime, which might back up this slip of paper should be interesting. 

For now, we will have to settle with seeing the back side of the Sicilian crime boss' wardrobe, in one of his hideouts.  A space where Messina Denero could access - via a sliding wooden wall - an armoured room, complete with boxes of jewels, precious stones, and it seems, paintings...but also empty boxes. 

This month, has proved an interesting month in the ongoing trial of six burglars, believed to be responsible for the theft of 18th-century jewels stolen from the Green Vault (Grünes Gewölbe in German) museum within the Dresden Castle in Saxony.  This week, four out of six members of the large Remmo family, brothers Wissam and Mohamed, and cousins Rabieh and Bashir Remmo entered formal confessions before the district court in Dresden, in hopes of receiving lighter sentences for their cooperation. 

Family members Abdul Majed and Ahmed Remmo have seemingly been exonerated by the confessions of the others. 

Family members who have confessed to active roles in the museum burglary, stated that they orchestrated the theft after Mohamed Remmo, twin brother to Abdul Majed Remmo, received a photo from an unnamed person who had visited the museum during a school outing. That photo was apparently of the Dresden Green Diamond. 

Set in a hat clasp, this dramatic 41-carat, 8.2 gram natural green diamond, from the mines of India, is the largest green diamond in the world.  Too well guarded, the team of would-be burglars turned their sights to other jewels which they believed would be easier to access.

Abdul Majed Remmo's role, had been stated as having been to gather supplies used for the theft, though his family members on trial downplayed his role, saying he performed inadequately, purchased inferior tools, and wasn't present on the day of the heist. 

After scouting the building in a lead up to the November 25th 2019 theft, Rabieh Remmo, caught on CCTV footage with a flashlight, entering the closed museum shortly before 5 a.m.  He admitted that he is the thief depicted in video footage and to smashing the display case, struck an estimated 56 times in less than 30 seconds.  Rabieh also admitted to filling a sack with €113.8m. worth of pieces from the Green Room's historic jewellery collection.

Pieces stolen during the theft include:

• a Hutkrempe der Diamantrosengarnitur by Christian August and August Goffhelf Globig, Dresden, 1782-1789;
• a Shoulder loop (epaulette) (diamond rose set) (part available) by 
• Christian August Globig and August Gotthelf Globig. Dresden 1782-1789;
• Christian August and August Gotthelf Globig's Sword (diamond rose), 1782-1789, inv. no. VIII 16 with a diamond-studded hilt containing nine large and 770 smaller diamonds as well as its scabbard;
• the Jewel of the Polish Order of the White Eagle (diamond rose set) by Christian August and August Gotthelf Globig, Dresden, 1782-89
• Breast Star of the Polish Order of the White Eagle (set of brilliants) Jean-Jacques Pallard. Geneva/Vienna between 1746 and 1749;
• Queen Amalie Auguste's Great Pectoral Bow by Christian August Globig, Dresden 1782, 51 large and 611 small diamonds, silver;
• Necklace of 177 Saxon River Pearls, obtained from Vogtland waters before 1734, lined up in 1805;
• 10 Rock Buttons from the Diamond Rose Set (each preserved)
• Jean Jacques Pallard, Geneva 1753, inv. no. VIII 9/1-10;
• Two arched shoe buckles from the Diamond Rose Set, workshop of Christian August Globig, Dresden 1782-1789, inv. no. VIII 12/ a,b;
• Large Diamond Rose (Diamond Rose Set)inventory no. VIII 15;
• Piece of jewelery in the form of palmettes (set of diamonds)
• Jean Jacques Pallard, Vienna, 1746-1746;
• Epaulette with the so-called "Saxon White" from the diamond set
• Franz Diespach; Christian August or August Gotthelf Globig; Jean-Jacques or André Jacques Pallard; 1782-1789;
• Hat decoration, so-called heron tail from the diamond set
• August Gotthelf Globig, Dresden between 1782 and 1807, inv. no. VIII 26; 
• Part of a muff hook, workshop of Jean Jacques Pallard, Geneva/Vienna 1746 and 1749, inv. no. VIII 34;
• Queen Amalie Auguste's diamond necklace (preserved in parts), 
• Ignaz Konrad Plödterl, Dresden 1824, inv. no. VIII 38;
• Aigrette for the hair in the shape of a sun by August Gotthelf Globig, Dresden, 1782-1807;
• Aigrette for the hair in the shape of a crescent moon (The diamond jewelry and the pearls of the queens)
• August Goffhelf Globig, Dresden, 1782-1807;

Wissam and Mohamed Remmo informed the court, through their lawyers, that they too were immediately involved in the heist. Wassim copped to having cut the bars on a window in the vault prior to the burglary and also to standing guard outside of the museum to receive the stolen items and tools used in the break-in.  Mohamed Remmo admitted, through his lawyer, to being outside the museum on the morning of the theft and to to receive the stolen items.

In a later than the others admission, Bashir Remmo, through his lawyers, told the court on Friday, that he had not been initially involved in the preparations for the burglary, but admitted to standing guard on the morning of the theft and to receiving the stolen items.

The thieves involved then made their getaway in an Audi A6 which they set fire to some four kilometers away from the palace in an underground car park, in Dresden-Pieschen, hoping by doing so, to any destroy evidence they may have theft behind.  They then proceeded back to Berlin in a Mercedes disguised as a taxi.

In an early Christmas present to Dresden, German authorities have been able to retrieve 31 of the jewellery pieces stolen in the 2019 robbery between December 16th and 17th.  Several of the most valuable pieces are still unaccounted for. 

Conservators testified during the trial that several of the recovered diamond-encrusted jewellery pieces had been broken and all bear traces of a whitish substance. This could be discharge residue from the fire extinguisher that the burglar discharged in an attempt to destroy traces of the team's DNA.  Some of the recovered diamonds also appear to have been damaged and it is believed that they were submerged in water for an extended period of time.

All of these confessions were spurred by efforts to lower time in prison, where the maximum period of incarceration could be up to 15 years for the museum theft and the accompanying charge of aggravated arson in the underground car park. 

The thief that burgled Greece’s National Gallery-Alexandros Soutsos Museum in Athens eleven years ago has been sentenced.  

Citing that the Court recognised the thief's good behaviour after his arrest for the heist, the Single-Member Court of Criminal Appeals of Athens handed down a six-year suspended probationary sentence with limited electronic monitoring, which will allow Giorgos Sarmantzopoulos, a circulating distance of three kilometres from his residence so that he can hold down a job and care of his elderly and sick parents. Previously, during the trial phase, he had been on complete house arrest.

On 9 January 2012, George S set off the security alarm at the Greek museum by opening a door 6 or 7 times, until the guard believed that the alarm system was malfunctioning and disabled the system. Then, at 4:30 a.m., he entered the museum through an separate unlocked balcony door and swiftly stripped four artworks from their frames, knocking others off the wall in doing so. 

Originally he selected: 

Head of a Woman, 1934 by Pablo Picasso

Stammer Windmill with Summer House, 1905 by Piet Mondrian 

Landscape with a Farm by Piet Mondrian 

St Diego de Alcala in Ecstasy with the Holy Trinity and the Symbols of Passion by Guglielmo Caccia, who was known as il Moncalvo.

On Monday, January 23, 2023, at 1 pm in Rome, a formal ceremony will be held regarding the return to Italy, from the United States, of 58 antiquities valued at nearly $19 million.  This event will be held at the Ministry of Culture's Sala Spadolini inside the Consiglio Nazionale al Collegio Romano.

The objects returned are the direct result of investigations in the United States regarding international traffickers of antiquities conducted by the Antiquities Trafficking Unit at the District Attorney's Office in New York in Manhattan, in collaboration with the Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale (TPC).  

Present for the event will be the Italy's Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano,  the Deputy Prosecutor of the Republic at the Court of Rome, Angelantonio Racanelli; the Commander of the Carabinieri TPC, General B. Vincenzo Molinese; and New York Assistant District Attorney Col. Matthew Bogdanos. 

This event will be direct streamed via the YouTube channel of Italy's Ministry of Culture for those who wish to attend the ceremony digitally. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-RcYKNBHtk&ab_channel=MiC_Italia

Marble head of Athena, ca. 200 BCE

In discussing these returns in a press release issued by the New York County District Attorney's Office, the New York authorities stated that these artefacts had been trafficked by Giacomo Medici, Giovanni Franco Becchina, Pasquale Camera and Edoardo Almagiá.  Twenty one of the pieces had been seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Art while the other thirty-seven were recovered from a New York collector and an antiquities dealer.

When speaking of these objects homecoming to Italy, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr., was quoted as saying:

“These 58 pieces represent thousands of years of rich history, yet traffickers throughout Italy utilised looters to steal these items and to line their own pockets. For far too long, they have sat in museums, homes, and galleries that had no rightful claim to their ownership.”  

Discussing the recent Italian restitutions Bragg also addressed the difficulty and time needed to work these complicated cultural property crime cases stating:

“Exposing these schemes takes years of diligent and difficult investigative work, and I applaud our team of prosecutors and analysts, who in coordination with our law enforcement partners, are continuing to make unparalleled progress in returning stolen antiquities.”  

Assistant US District Attorney Col. Matthew Bogdanos, who heads up the Manhattan Office's Antiquities Trafficking Unit, and who will be present at Monday's ceremony, has often related his department's work to an axiom of jurisprudence “that justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done.” R v. Sussex Justices, ex parte McCarthy, 1 KB 256, 259 (1924).  Something this publicly streamable restitution will undoubtedly demonstrate.  

Each of these objects should be viewed as a reminder to collectors, dealers, and art institutions, that the US authorities treat stolen cultural property seriously and public prosecutors continue to pursue the rightful return of plundered goods.

Police standing watch outside Messino Denaro's residence in Campobello di Mazara

Following the arrest of fugitive mafia super boss Matteo Messina Denaro, there are some interesting avenues worth exploring regarding the diversification of mafia holdings. One of which may, or may not, strike close to home with regards to the  economic activities of 83-year-old former antiquities dealer Gianfranco Becchina in his later years.  Messina Denaro was captured yesterday after 30 years on the run.

Back in May 2022 Italy's Direzione Investigativa Antimafia, the country's anti-mafia investigation division, issued a confirmation confiscation decree on Gianfranco Becchina's property holdings, based upon a request from the Public Prosecutor's Office of Palermo.  As per that decree, the DIA's action finalised the confiscation of a significant portion of Becchina's movable, real estate and corporate assets "attributable to a well-known international trader of works of art art and artefacts of historical-archaeological value suspected of links with the mafia gangs, in particular in the province of Trapani." While the DIA's final seizure announcement didn't name Becchina as the businessman living in Castelvetrano, whose assets were seized, the regional and National newspapers did.   

But back to yesterday's arrest of the mafia crime boss

A municipality in a strategic position, Campobello di Mazara is a town of 11 thousand inhabitants closely rooted to the mafia, with some residents in these days even lamenting his arrest, saying the Trapani cosca put food on the tables. The city is also home to Alfonso Tumbarello, the physician now under investigation for having treated Andrea Bonafede, alias Matteo Messina Denaro, who is also the doctor of the real Andrea Bonafede. Tumbarello, it is reported wrote prescriptions in Bonafede's name for the cosa nostra boss.

It is also home to mafia boss Francesco Luppino and loyalist Raffaele Urso, AKA Cinuzzo.  Wire interceptions confirmed that Luppino, arrested in September 2022, was in close contact with Messina Denaro for land management.  While Urso, the boss's ambassador to business in Italy's capital, was arrested in April 2018, and sentenced to 18 years and 4 months in prison for his involvement in the Trapani clan.  

Other interesting Campobello di Mazara residents include the former city councillor, Calogero Jonn Luppino, who had 6 million euros in assets seized for mafia association, including 10 companies and related business complexes, 6 parcels of land, 14 bank accounts, 1 motor vehicle, 1 racehorse, cash, and gold bars.  That Luppino was involved in mafia rackets and extortion which forced various businesses in the Trapani area to install gambling devices in their businesses or risk threatening retaliation.  

Even the city's former mayor Ciro Caravà, was indicted in 2012 for mafia association as part of the Campus Belli anti-mafia operation.  Following his arrest the Municipality was dissolved for mafia infiltration on July 27, 2012.  Strangely, after  Caravà's sentence was overturned and he was released from custody, he died by suffocation, at age 58, purportedly trying to swallow a piece of bread. 

All this to say that Campobello di Mazara is not your typical bucolic Sicilian town, making it not at all surprising that this boss was able to hide in plain site here. 

But who is Giovanni Luppino, aside from being Messina Denero's driver?  

This Luppino is not believed to be a relation to  Messina Denaro loyalist Franco Luppino.  Nor, it is claimed, is he a relation to an olive oil producer of the same name.  However, the driver, Giovanni Luppino also worked in the olive oil biz and reportedly had storage warehouses in Campobello di Mazara and Castelvetrano and worked with wholesalers buyers from the Bay of Naples as well as local growers of Nocellara del Belìce olives, a protected denomination of origin (PDO) olive varietal, consumed as table olives and used for the production of extra-virgin oil.

If this olive sounds familiar to ARCA's blog readers it is because Gianfranco Becchina also invested in this money-making olive.   Beginning in 1989, one of Becchina's companies produced his own Nocellara del Belìce olive oil, harvested from the olive trees on Tenuta Pignatelli, a one-hundred-acre expanse of olive groves and lemon trees with a historic main villa from the early 1800s on the outskirts of Castelvetrano, once owned by the Princess Pignatelli of Spain.  

Sold in upscale boutiques, Becchina's olive oil was marketed to USA-based customers for an eye-popping $36 a bottle and is known to have medalled in the New York International Olive Oil Competition over the course of three years, 2018, 2019, and 2021.  

Patrizia Messina Denaro - Sister of the Boss, and Capodonna representative of the Castelvetrano, family also had an olive-oil company belonging to her and her husband impounded.

Nocellara del Belìce olives are cultivated in a fertile area which encompasses the municipalities of Castelvetrano, Campobello di Mazara, Partanna, Poggioreale, Salaparuta and Santa Ninfa, all towns in the province subject to the heavy influence of the Trapani mandamento of the Cosa Nostra.  With some 5,000 olive growers who produce this kind of olive, the province of Trapani in the west of Sicily is a lucrative agricultural market, known for its mafia infiltration, as well as an important stop in the seasonal labor cycle, with the majority of harvesters being sub-Saharan Africans who are all too often exploited, treated as human farming tools, no different than tractors. 

Whether there is a connection between the mafia boss, his driver the olive oil merchant, or the former antiquities dealer has not been proven. But what is known is that in November 2017 Italy's Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate, through the Court of Trapani's penal and preventive measures section, filed a seizure order for all movable assets, including real estate and corporate enterprises attributable to Gianfranco Becchina on the basis of an order issued from the District Attorney of Palermo based upon investigations conducted by Italy's anti-mafia DIA, under the coordination of the Palermo Public Prosecutor's Office.  That order resulted in the seizure of not only Becchina's cement trade business, Atlas Cements Ltd., Demetra srl., and Becchina & company srl., but also his olive oil venture, Olio Verde srl.   

Much like antiquities, olive oil is a highly lucrative and diversified, income stream making it appealing to Italy’s organised-crime syndicates

Police data shows that there is a known and profitable agromafia active in Italy related to olive cultivation.  Data also shows that all of Italy’s major crime syndicates — the Neapolitan Camorra, ’Ndrangheta, and Cosa Nostra have profited from  farming investments.  

The economic importance of agriculture for mafia organisations like Messina Denero's can be deduced from the frequency of ongoing trials and the confiscation sentences of agricultural, or agro-industrial assets, in and around the province of Trapani.  Many of which have been tied to trials and seizure orders relating to  individuals found to have been associated with Messina Denaro or his enterprises. 

With respect to olives specifically, it has long been the common view that the Neapolitans control the distribution of olives and the olive oil market in Sicily, via a price fixing of sorts, tacitly condoned, if not formally agreed upon, between the Cosa Nostra and the Camorra.  And studies have shown that members of both organised crime organisations have profited from the selling of counterfeit extra virgin olive oil, controlling farmlands, price fixing, and in some cases labor exploitation.   

How important, olive holdings are to the mechanisations of Messina Denaro's Trapani cosca has never been publicly disclosed. But we do know that this syndicate's reach extends beyond the underworld and into diversified revenue streams, like Italy’s illicit antiquities trade and the very path our food travels before reaching our supermarket trolleys and our dinner tables.  

And with margins as high as 700 percent, profits from olive oil are higher than cocaine — making it an appealing channel for money laundering.