The mafia’s boss of bosses has claimed in conversations with a fellow prison inmate that Silvio Berlusconi used to pay the organisation £100,000 every six months to protect his business interests.
Salvatore “Toto” Riina was secretly filmed by police in the exercise yard of the Opera prison in Milan as he spoke to Alberto Lorusso, a Puglia crime boss, over a five-month period last year.
The transcripts have been submitted in evidence to a trial in Palermo at which prosecutors have been examining alleged links between representatives of the state and Cosa Nostra.
In one conversation, Riina said that the mafia in the Catania area had burnt down supermarkets belonging to Mr Berlusconi to persuade him to pay for protection. “He used to pay us 250 million lire every six months,” Riina added.
He said that he had never met Mr Berlusconi, who became prime minister for the first time in 1994. “He wasn’t so famous in those days, otherwise I would have sought him out.”
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Mr Berlusconi has always denied paying protection money to the mafia. He was not available for comment yesterday. One of his advisers, Marcello Dell’Utri, is serving a seven-year jail sentence for collusion with the mafia after being accused of acting as a mediator between him and crime bosses.