MORE THAN 90 alleged Mafiosi were arrested in Sicily and Tuscany yesterday in a an early morning round-up that has dealt a serious blow to the Cosa Nostra, according to Italy's chief anti-Mafia investigator, Pietro Grasso.
Speaking to news agency Ansa, Mr Grasso suggested that yesterday's police operation had followed on from the 2006 arrest of then "Capo dei Capi" (boss of bosses) Bernardo Provenzano, saying: "If that operation . . . brought Cosa Nostra to its knees, then this one has prevented it from getting up again".
In a wide-ranging operation, involving helicopters and 1,200 policemen and concentrated mainly in Sicily, investigators claim to have thwarted a plan by the Sicilian Mafia to re-organise itself.
In particular, investigators believe that various senior figures in Cosa Nostra were on the point of reconstituting the ruling "commissione", a sort of mafia governing body comprising representatives of all the most powerful Sicilian organised crime families.
Modelled on American Mafia lines, following an infamous 1957 meeting of the "families" in Palermo's Hotel delle Palme, hosted by Italo-American godfather Joe Bonanna, the "commissione" was still operative in the 1990s when it was headed by another "boss of bosses", Toto Riina.
It was the "commissione", urged on by Riina, which opted for an offensive strategy of all-out attack on the Italian state, marked most notably by the 1992 killings of anti-Mafia investigators, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
Following Riina's arrest in 1993, the "commissione" ceased to function, leaving families and individual godfathers to run their "business" on their own, thus leading to regular squabbles between rival gangs over territorial control.
Bernardo Provenzano, who was arrested in 2006 after more than 40 years on the run, took over de facto control of "Cosa Nostra" following Riina. But he had no inclination to reconstitute the "commissione" lest it might jeopardise his life on the run.
Further confusion in Mafia "business" was caused when Provenzano's designated successor, Salvatore Lo Piccolo, was arrested in November 2007.
On the basis of information gathered in phone taps, investigators believe that the next man up as "boss of bosses", namely wanted godfather Matteo Messina Denaro, based in Trapani, near Palermo, has been working to the "commissione" together once more.
Mafiosi, linked to Denaro, met in a garage in Bagheria, near Palermo, on November 14th, with a view to preparing the first meeting of the new "commissione".
That meeting, however, had been bugged by investigators and was partially responsible for the mass arrests which focused mainly on Sicilian families and low-level godfathers.
Senior centre-right government figures responded positively to yesterday's arrests with justice minister Angelino Alfano saying that the police operation was proof that the "tenacious determination" of the state was stronger than organized crime.
Interior minister Roberto Maroni promised that the state would "strike further hard blows against all forms of organised crime".
Notwithstanding the Ministers' optimism, organised crime remains a huge problem for Italy with the Italian retailers' confederation, "Confesercenti", recently suggesting that organized crime represents 6 per cent of Italian gross domestic product, with an annual turnover of €130 billion.