Leonardo Badalamenti, 60, son of top 1970s Sicilian mafia boss, Gaetano Badalamenti, was arrested on Wednesday in Sicily. The Italian police said they were acting on a Brazilian international arrest warrant.
Badalamenti is wanted by the Brazilian government for bank fraud and drug trafficking, crimes he committed in the country using an alias. He has been on the run since 2017.
After his arrest at his mother’s house in the city of Castellammare del Golfo, he was taken to a Palermo prison where he will await extradition.
This is not the first arrest for Leonardo. In 2009 he was arrested in Sao Paulo, Brazil after his thwarted plan to use fake Venezuelan bonds to obtain credit lines totaling $2.2 billion from HSBC Holdings Plc, Bank of America Corp. and unidentified British banks.
His father, Gaetano “Don Tano” Badalamenti, became infamous in the organized crime world after ordering the 1978 hit on Peppino Impastato, an outspoken anti-mafia journalist. He was also the boss of the Sicilian Mafia Commission.
In the 1980s, after a mafia war was started by Salvatore “Toto” Riina and his Corleone clan to assume sole control of organized crime, Don Tano moved his whole family to Brazil.
In 1987, Gaetano Badalamenti was convicted of drug trafficking in the United States in the “Pizza Connection” case. He was sentenced to 45-years in prison where he died in 2004 at the age of 80.
