Giuseppe Guttadauro

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Giuseppe Guttadauro, Mafia boss of Brancaccio.

Filippo Guttadauro, the brother of Giuseppe is the brother-in-law of upcoming Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro and the go-between for Messina Denaro and Bernardo Provenzano. They are involved in cocaine trafficking in agreement with 'Ndrangheta clans from Platì, Marina di Gioiosa Jonica and Siderno, as well as the Mafia family of Mariano Agate.^[1]^[2] Filippo Guttadauro was arrested in July 2006.^[3]

Giuseppe Guttadauro (born August 18, 1948) is an Italian Mafia boss and a high profile surgeon from the neighbourhood Roccella in Palermo.^[4]. Born at Bagheria, he became the regent of the Brancaccio mandamento after the arrest and subsequent incarceration of the capomafie Giuseppe Graviano and Filippo Graviano.

Guttadauro was arrested in November 2002. His wife Gisella Greco and son were arrested on December 6, 2002 in a vast operation against the Mafia (Operation Ghiaccio), in which Guttadauro received another arrest warrant. His wife and son allegedly continued to run illicit business in his absence and acted as a conduit for his messages to other Mafia bosses on the outside.^[5]^[6]

Police had bugged Guttadauro’s apartment and he was overheard discussing political appointments with the city's public health councillor Domenico Miceli, himself a doctor. (Miceli was sentenced to eight years for mafia association in December 2006)^[7] Guttadauro learned that his home was being "bugged" from another doctor. The colleague alleged that he, in turn, had been tipped off by the President of the Sicilian region Salvatore Cuffaro.^[8]

Before Guttadauro discovered the eavesdropping, he was recorded apparently describing how the mafia had funded Cuffaro's 2001 election campaign. According to a transcript, he told his brother-in-law that Cuffaro was handed packages of cash "in the least elegant, but most tangible way possible".^[8]

The inquiry set up to trace the origin of leaks during an investigation into Guttadauro led to the questioning of Cuffaro by the Palermo prosecuting office,^[9] and in September 2004 to an indictment charging Cuffaro with aiding and abetting the Mafia.^[8] Cuffaro refused to resign when sent for trial, saying he would only do so if convicted. In the meantime he was re-elected as President in 2006 regional election defeating Rita Borsellino, the sister of the late judge Paolo Borsellino, killed by the Mafia in 1992.^[10] On October 15, 2007, the prosecution requested eight years' imprisonment for Cuffaro for passing confidential information to the so-called moles in the Palermo Antimafia directorate.^[11]