“Riina was still the boss of Cosa Nostra when he died. No one had taken his place after his arrest. It is unprecedented for the position not to be filled when the boss is arrested,” said Roberto Saviano, the author of Gomorrah.

That Totò Riina held on to his position as “boss of bosses” while in isolation in prison for the last 24 years of his life is remarkable. But in mafia culture, symbolism is important, and Riina, who died on Friday, was able to make his views known via signals, messages and intermediaries. From prison, he issued threats against the anti-mafia prosecutor Nino Di Matteo, who now lives under armed protection. Riina’s sons, one of whom has been convicted of four murders, have allegedly found ways to communicate on behalf of their father.

Why has there been no successor?

Riina’s leadership of Cosa Nostra was a reign of terror. Nicknamed “the Beast”, he was utterly ruthless and extremely violent. “One of the ironies about Riina’s reign was that he held total power, he centralised power to an unprecedented extent, and his power was a catastrophe for Cosa Nostra,” said John Dickie, the author of Mafia Republic.

Riina’s war against the state was part of a plan to create a new order of mafia power in politics and business. His ambition was shocking. With a series of high-profile assassinations and a bombing campaign on the mainland in the early 1990s, he planned to bring the state to its knees and force it to make a pact with his organisation. His tactic was to make Cosa Nostra a force to be reckoned with, and so brought it out into the open in a way it had never been before.

But Riina’s war almost destroyed Cosa Nostra. His attacks provoked an unprecedented backlash from the state. Law enforcement in Sicily came down hard on the organisation and even high-level mafiosi, including Riina’s golden boy, Giovanni Brusca, collaborated. The ruling commission of Cosa Nostra was unable to meet, for fear of arrest, and remained scattered and weak. The police became so effective at surveillance and capture, in Sicily the organisation has struggled to re-establish itself.

Not only has law enforcement become hugely effective against Cosa Nostra, but its income stream from protection rackets has diminished. A campaign of civil resistance against paying the mafia tax has been widely successful. On the streets of Palermo, which was once held hostage under the reign of Riina and his capos, Cosa Nostra no longer exerts the terror it did. If a mafioso approaches a small businessman and demands payment, he is likely to get beaten up.



Among anti-mafia investigators, there is no complacency. Federico Cafiero De Raho, the chief anti-mafia prosecutor, told la Repubblica: “Criminal organisations have penetrated politics and the economy without anyone seeing, without being noticed. The clans have abandoned their strategy of violence and intimidation and now attain their goals not with guns but sitting behind desks, by means of corruption, collusion. Our next task is to find and root out the mafia’s accomplices in the professional classes.”



The old-school image of the powerful and intimidating boss who could freeze blood with a look or have someone killed with a word no longer applies. The mafia’s economy is now run through legitimate companies: in Sicily, windfarms and supermarkets, road transport and real estate. Money is laundered via international property deals and banks.



Roberto Scarpinato, another anti-mafia prosecutor, has denounced the “obscene power”, the corrupt businesses and politicians that allow criminal organisations to operate. He says the mafia no longer needs to force its way into the institutions of state. “There’s less violence: they don’t need to kill you if they can buy you.”