Italy finds the hidden treasure of the last great Sicilian mafia boss: 200 million hidden and the Costa del Sol as a major piece of the puzzle

The last great mystery of Matteo Messina Denaro was his fortune—where he had hidden it. For over three decades, Italy's most wanted Cosa Nostra boss built a financial empire in the shadows through drug trafficking while eluding the Italian state. Messina Denaro died in prison in 2023, eight months after his capture, but his treasure remained one of the great enigmas. It was also unimaginable that a significant portion would be in Spain. But that turned out to be the case. This Wednesday, the Anti-Mafia Directorate of Palermo announced that part of Messina Denaro's fortune has been found. Specifically, over 200 million euros in companies, financial assets, and luxury real estate—22 of which were found in Spain—linked to the deceased mafia leader as part of a massive international operation. The operation also culminated in the arrest of three people accused of aggravated money laundering for mafia favoritism. The starting point was Andorra. The investigation began there when a woman from Campobello di Mazara (Sicily), with suspiciously sourced assets, alerted the authorities. They flagged her and launched an investigation. "Subsequent investigations confirmed that the woman had been married to a high-profile criminal drug trafficker, already convicted on multiple occasions, with close ties to Cosa Nostra," the Italian authorities explained. The contribution of some pentiti—former mafiosos who collaborated with the Italian justice—was also crucial. They explained that "part of the money flow linked to drug trafficking was systematically directed to the needs of the Castelvetrano command and its own leader, Messina Denaro." With this preamble, "the hypothesis that the Andorran funds were actually attributable to the aforementioned criminal activities in the field of drug trafficking took shape," added the Italian police. Spain, however, would be the other major piece of the puzzle. In particular, Málaga, Marbella, Benahavís, and Puerto Banús—exclusive areas of the Costa del Sol—were among the places where investigators have tracked down and are intervening in some of the "extraordinarily valuable" properties of the Sicilian boss. "Some are true luxury tourist complexes," the authorities added. All this was made possible thanks to collaboration between the Guardia di Finanza and various police forces, including the Spanish National Police, as specified in Italy. The Costa del Sol, a classic destination for dirty European money since the 1980s, has thus reappeared in a major investigation as a territory for laundering and sheltering fortunes built on drug trafficking and violence. Indeed, the origin of the money dates back to the 1980s, when Messina Denaro began to amass a fortune under the umbrella of Cosa Nostra through drug trafficking. Decades of profits were channeled and reinvested through offshore companies and opaque financial structures spread across the world. "In detail, it was possible to determine that these capitals were reintroduced over time into the circuits of the legal economy and are today dispersed in a wide variety of financial instruments, shareholdings, bank accounts, as well as in corporate holdings and others." It also "identified 8 foreign companies, of which 5 are based in Spain, 2 in Gibraltar, and 1 in the Cayman Islands, mainly used as containers for real estate investments and asset management." The investments were also distributed in the purchase of precious materials, including 12 kilos of gold, already seized. The investigation, coordinated by prosecutor Maurizio De Lucia and deputy Vito Di Giorgio—with the assistance of Giovanni Melillo from the National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor's Office—also tracked the hidden treasure in six other jurisdictions: besides Italy, Spain, and Andorra, also in Gibraltar, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Lebanon, and the Principality of Monaco.