It would make a great film script: A Mafia family has decamped to the south of France, headed by the first woman to run a Sicilian Mafia outfit - and who controls operations by email. Meanwhile, her jailed Mafia brothers have managed to father children from their prison cells, by sperm donation, using their lawyer as courier. These are the stranger-than-fiction allegations about the Graviano family which began to emerge when Palermo police recently arrested nine Mafia suspects.
The arrests by Palermo police followed accusations that the Italian government had been dropping its guard against the Mafia. And while the arrests were welcome news for the government, they also showed the effectiveness of police pressure which throughout the 1990s, largely because of the use of ex-mafiosi turned state witnesses, has led to the imprisonment of Mafia bosses and thousands of their collaborators.
This was probably the reason that the newly arrested suspects are thought to have transferred their operational headquarters from Palermo to the south of France. The boss of the gang, which shifted its headquarters to Nice, is alleged to be Nunzia Graviano (who was among those arrested), and she is claimed to be the first woman ever to have run a Sicilian Mafia outfit, taking the place of her two brothers who were imprisoned in 1994. She was among the nine suspects arrested last week.
One of the more bizarre aspects of the story is the claim by investigators that the Graviano family lawyer took sperm from them in prison to impregnate their wives, who gave birth in 1997. But this is not the only field in which the Mafia suspects are alleged to have used the latest technology. Nunzia Graviano took home lessons in computer use because, it is alleged, she was convinced that email was the safest means of communicating with the rest of her family, with contacts in Canada for drug trafficking, with a Luxemburg finance company and a French money-changing office.
The Graviano gang is believed to be one of three in Palermo whose support enabled ferocious Toto Riina, a native of the hill town Corleone to become crime boss of the Sicilian capital in the 1980s. But, like Riina, the Graviano brothers, Filippo and Giuseppe, are now in prison. They face charges of planning and/or participating in the killing of the anti-Mafia investigative magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, and of the priest Father Pino Puglisi, who spoke out against the Mafia in the Palermo district dominated by the Graviano family.
At a second trial for the killing of Borsellino, Giuseppe Graviano received a life sentence. He has appealed and there will be a third trial in which Felippoe is implicated. The two brothers are also accused of organising bomb attacks on various Italian historic monuments in Florence, Rome and elsewhere.
After the two brothers were arrested while dining in a Milanese restaurant in 1994, their younger sister Nunzia apparently took over. But this seems to have entailed more than simply continuing the protection racket in Palermo, getting a cut on public works subcontracts and providing regular stipends for the families of imprisoned mafiosi.
Nunzia, who is now 31, moved to southern France, buying a villa (with swimming pool, huge grounds and three independent kitchens) in the hills behind Nice and another in Monte Carlo, and employing teachers for home lessons in French as well as in computer use. She was on to something there, because telephone tapping was one of the means which led to her arrest.
Two of her well-qualified advisers were arrested at the same time. One is the family lawyer, Domenico Salvo, the other a tax expert, Giorgio Puma.
Salvo is the 52-year-old son of a renowned philosophy professor who was a mentor for the assassinated anti-Mafia crusader Giovanni Falcone. But, according to the investigators, bewigged, corpulent, party-loving, Porsche-owning Salvo not only defended the Graviano family in court, but participated in their criminal activities.
Allegedly, they paid him $7,000 monthly, as well as satisfying his cocaine appetite. He worked with his friend Giorgio Puma, who was consulted frequently by Palermo courts which, Salvo seemed to have calculated, would keep him immune from investigation.
Puma streamlined the Graviano financial network, which involved a financial company in Luxemburg - the Fiducaire Beaumanoir. Its director, Angleo Zito, helped Nunzia Graviano to buy Sarl Change Halevy, which has one of its chain of money-changing offices in Nice. The investigators allege this laundered Mafia money. Angelo Zito was arrested in Bergamo as he was about to board a plane for Luxembourg.
Puma is allegedly the main source of information for all the arrests. But the reason he seems to have switched sides are not yet clear.
The story of how the Graviano brothers fathered children from prison has also emerged since the recent arrests. Filippo and Giuseppe Graviano have been in a maximum security prison in Spoleto since 1994. But, almost two years ago there was a lavish christening party for their newborn sons at the historic Negresco hotel on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. Sumptuous casatte and other Sicilian sweets were flown in from Palermo for the occasion while champagne flowed like the Rhone. Both boys were named Michele after their grandfather.
But some guests had the courage to ask how they could be the children of the Graviano brothers, who had been in prison for two years. Domenico Salvo gave an explanation which received much media attention. He said that, for seeing their possible arrest, the brothers had created a sperm bank so that artificial insemination would enable them to have children even if imprisoned.
That version of events has been disputed, however, by the Palermo investigators who claim that Salvo transported the sperm from the brothers to the wives they married after being imprisoned.
The recent arrest of the nine Mafia suspects offers the latest indication that apparently respectable professional people still collaborate with the criminal organisation, despite its severe setbacks.
The Mafia killed Falcone and Borsellino, who were responsible for turning the heat up against it. But Gian Carlo Caselli of Turin volunteered to take Falcone's place and has continued to apply effective pressure.
But perhaps Caselli tired of the exhausting life of the chief judicial investigator in Palermo: he spent long hours at work and then went home to a heavily-guarded apartment complex where neighbours were fearful they would be victims of a Mafia bomb attack. Being an investigative magistrate in Palermo is like a prison sentence. He recently accepted a position as head of the national prison system.
Shortly before he did so, some of his assistants complained that the state had relaxed pressure on the Mafia just as it was about to vanquish it. One of those who voiced concern, Roberto Scarpinato, said he needed to know if the anti-Mafia war had been abandoned, because he would not like to finish in the same way as the Japanese soldier who was found in a Philippines jungle, still prepared to fight, years after the end of the second World War. Other commentators warned that the Mafia was not defeated, but merely regrouping.
The concerns arose partly because of legal changes, recently introduced by parliament - particularly those which set more rigorous standards for the use of the testimony of state witnesses.
As long as a high level of Sicilian youth unemployment continues there will be recruits for the Mafia, but Caselli says he is convinced the anti-Mafia investigations will continue efficiently without him. And the nine recent arrests are a flying start for Caselli's successor, Piero Grasso, who was previously deputy director of the National Anti-Mafia Authority. The Mafia reaction to his appointment was to threaten that he would be killed at his seaside house.