Matteo Messina Denaro's driver sentenced to 9 years.

The Palermo preliminary hearing judge sentenced for aiding and abetting e “procured failure to comply with the sentence” aggravated, at 9 years old, Giovanni Luppino, the entrepreneur of Campobello of Mazara (TP) who acted as a driver for the Cosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro in the last days of his life as a fugitive.

Luppino, according to the prosecution, represented in the courtroom by the prosecutors of the DDA Piero Padova e Gianluca De Leo, also asked for money on behalf of the mafia boss and, together with his children, arrested last February, took care of travel, removals and various organizational aspects of the Castelvetrano godfather's fugitive status.

The accused had been arrested along with Matteo Messina Denaro on January 16, 2023 outside the La Maddalena clinic, the health center where the boss had been undergoing chemotherapy for months and where he had undergone surgery.

Luppino told the police that he had met his passenger months earlier but was unaware of his true identity. «He came to ask me for a ride to Palermo this morning», he justified himself. But the prosecutor never believed the suspect's thesis.

As the months passed and new investigations were carried out, the entrepreneur's position worsened because the magistrates discovered that there had been as many as 50 visits to the clinic. And that the accused had asked for money from other entrepreneurs on behalf of the mafia boss. A circumstance confirmed in the courtroom by two witnesses who, together with the other elements found against Luppino, led the prosecutors to change the charge to Mafia.