Mr Palazzotto was among 95 mobsters rounded up in June in Palermo in an operation dubbed 'Operation Apocalypse' aimed at decapitating the city's new Mafia leadership. Police said they had put a temporary stop to vote rigging, extortion and drug trafficking operations as well as the laundering of ill gotten cash through betting shops. More importantly, officers said they had halted a bid to pull together scrapping clans across the city into a more compact criminal empire, harking back to the leadership of Toto Riina, the "boss of bosses" jailed in 1993.