Refalo slams Italian news report linking him to Mafia boss as 'absolute hogwash'
Minister said he leased the property in 2002, nine years after Toto Riina was arrested
Updated 3.38pm with PL statement
Agriculture Minister Anton Refalo has denied an Italian news report that he owned a house in Gozo where a Sicilian mafia boss lived.
La Stampa reported on Saturday morning that Salvatore “Totò” Riina hid from Italian authorities in a sea-view villa in Qala owned by the Maltese minister. Riina was reportedly a frequent visitor to Gozo.
However, contacted by Times of Malta, Refalo said he never owned that house, adding that he leased the property almost a decade after the notorious mafia boss was arrested in 1993.
“The La Stampa report is factually incorrect. I am not the owner of the property and never was,” Refalo said.
He insisted the story was “absolute hogwash and cheap sensationalism”.
The agriculture minister said he leased the property in 2002, nine years after Riina was arrested. He pointed out that when he leased the property in June 2002, the owner was represented by a lawyer acting on her behalf.
“Any attempt at associating me with Totò Riina, who I have now learnt had been arrested nine years before I leased that property, is absolute hogwash and cheap sensationalism.”
Known as il capo dei capi - the boss of bosses - Riina is considered to have been one of Sicily’s most dangerous mafia bosses and led the Corleonesi mafia in the 1980s and 1990s, declaring a “war against the state”.
He is believed to have ordered the murder of up to 200 people including most famously that of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
In a maxi trial of Sicilian mafia in Palermo in 1986, he was sentenced to life in prison in absentia but he was only captured in 1993 after 23 years of living as a fugitive. His capture provoked a series of bombings across Sicily in art galleries and churches.
Riina died in November 2017.
In April 1993, Riina's driver, Baldassare di Maggio, told Italian magistrates that Riina owned a farmhouse in Gozo.
'Open secret'
The Labour Party said the reports “confirmed what for many years was an open secret”.
“During a Nationalist government, the Italian mafia and its leader were hidden in Gozo and were able to enter and leave our country without difficulty. Malta became their backyard,” the PL said in a statement on Saturday.
The PL added the Italian news media reports “raise many questions” for the representatives of past Nationalist governments “who are close to Alex Borg”.
It alleged that the Nationalist government at the time “had chosen not to investigate” reports that the Italian mafia was in Gozo.