‘The Godmother’ arrested amid rise of mafia women

Rome: Forget The Godfather — it is women who increasingly run Sicily’s notorious Cosa Nostra mafia. The wife of an imprisoned mob boss was one of 38 people arrested yesterday, accused of running a mafia clan in Palermo, the island’s capital.

Prosecutors say Teresa Marino, a mother of five, became a key figure in Cosa Nostra after her husband, Tommaso Lo Presti, was arrested in April 2014 and sent to prison for mafia association. The 38-year-old is accused of taking over the clan’s drug trafficking network, managing shipments of cocaine from South America.

Marino and the 37 other people who were arrested in Palermo, Rome, Naples and Milan were charged with extortion, mafia association, drug trafficking, trading in weapons and fraud in the bidding for public works contracts.

Acting in her husband’s absence, she even performed a sort of spending review, deciding which mafia families should continue receiving monthly payments while fathers and husbands were behind bars.

“The role she assumed as head of the clan shows that times have changed - these days there is equality of the sexes even within Cosa Nostra,” said Leonardo Agueci, a prosecutor in Palermo. “But this is certainly not the first case of its kind.”

Anti-mafia investigators placed Marino under surveillance and secretly intercepted her phone conversations.

She was recorded discussing how much money the clan was making and which families deserved financial help. She gave advice to other mafia wives who found themselves on trial or compelled to give evidence in court.

“She would tell them not to cry in the court room, telling them ‘show them you’re proud Mafiosi, you must only show your pain at home’,” said Giuseppe De Riggi, a police colonel involved in the investigation.

“Teresa Marino is an important figure in Cosa Nostra. She exercised power with great authority.”

The arrests were made during dawn raids across the country, in which police seized 10kg of cocaine. The clan, based in Palermo and part of the wider Cosa Nostra network, is also alleged to have been involved in intimidating and extorting money from a range of businesses, from construction firms to fish wholesalers. Out of 27 alleged cases of extortion, only one businessman was brave enough to refuse to pay the clan “pizzo” or protection money.