Michele Placido is an Italian actor, film director, and screenwriter. He began his career on stage, and first gained mainstream attention through a series of roles in films directed by the likes of Mario Monicelli and Marco Bellocchio, winning the Berlinale's Silver Bear for Best Actor for his performance in the 1979 film Ernesto. He is known internationally for portraying police inspector Corrado Cattani on the crime drama television series La piovra (1984–2001). Placido's directorial debut, Pummarò, was screened Un Certain Regard at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. Three of his films have competed for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. He is a five-time Nastro d'Argento and four-time David di Donatello winner. In 2021, Placido was appointed President of the Teatro Comunale in Ferrara.
Luciano Leggio was an Italian criminal and leading figure of the Sicilian Mafia. He was the head of the Corleonesi, the Mafia faction that originated in the town of Corleone. He is universally known by the surname Liggio, a result of a misspelling in court documents in the 1960s.
La Piovra is an Italian television drama series about the Mafia. The series was directed by various directors who each worked on different seasons, including Damiano Damiani, Florestano Vancini, Luigi Perelli, and Giacomo Battiato . The music was written by Riz Ortolani, Ennio Morricone, and by Paolo Buonvino.
Stefano Bontade was a powerful member of the Sicilian Mafia. His actual surname was Bontate. He was the boss of the Santa Maria di Gesù Family in Palermo. He was also known as the Principe di Villagrazia − the area of Palermo he controlled − and Il Falco. He had links with several powerful politicians in Sicily, and with prime minister Giulio Andreotti. In 1981 he was killed by the rival faction within Cosa Nostra, the Corleonesi. His death sparked a brutal Mafia War that left several hundred mafiosi dead.
Marcello Dell'Utri is a former Italian politician and senior advisor to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Formerly a senator in the Italian Senate, Dell'Utri has been found guilty of tax fraud, false accounting, and complicity in conspiracy with the Sicilian Mafia; the conviction for the last charge has been upheld on 9 May 2014 by the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation which sentenced Dell'Utri to seven years in prison. The conviction is final and cannot be further appealed. The third criminal section of Palermo's Appellate Court declared Dell'Utri a fugitive in May 2014, when it was discovered he had fled the country ahead of the final court decision. After being detained in Lebanon, on 13 June 2014 Dell'Utri was extradited to Italy, where he served 4 years of imprisonment and 1 year of house arrest. He has been further sentenced in April 2018 to 12 years due to the State-Mafia Pact.
Michele Sindona was an Italian banker and convicted felon. Known in banking circles as "The Shark", Sindona was a member of Propaganda Due (#0501), a secret Masonic lodge of the Grand Orient of Italy, and had clear connections to the Sicilian Mafia. He was fatally poisoned in prison while serving a life sentence for the murder of lawyer Giorgio Ambrosoli.
Franklin National Bank is a bank based in Franklin Square on Long Island, New York. It was once the United States' 20th largest bank. On October 8, 1974, it collapsed in obscure circumstances involving Michele Sindona, who was a renowned Mafia-banker and member of the irregular freemasonic lodge, Propaganda Due. It was at the time the largest bank failure in the history of the country.
Giorgio Boris Giuliano was a police chief from Palermo, Sicily. He was the head of Palermo's Flying Squad. He was killed by the Sicilian Mafia while investigating heroin trafficking and money laundering. Not long before his death he had been one of the first Italian policemen to have attended the FBI academy at Quantico, Virginia. His son Alessandro became head of the Milan Flying Squad and arrested old guard Mafioso Gaetano Fidanzati in 2009; as part of the same operation, Gianni Nicchi was captured in Palermo.
Giovanni "John" Gambino was an Italian-born American mobster. Born in Palermo, Sicily, he became a made member of the Gambino crime family in 1975 and a capodecina or captain, and head of the crime family's Sicilian faction, appointed by family boss John Gotti in 1986, according to Mafia turncoat Sammy Gravano.
Power on Earth is a biography of Mafia-linked Italian banker and accused murderer Michele Sindona written by Nick Tosches. Based on his own in-depth research, including several interviews with Sindona himself while he was in prison awaiting trial, Tosches tells Sindona's rise from poor beginnings to becoming one of the world's most powerful bankers. It also details his connections with the Gambino crime family, the Vatican Bank, the Franklin National Bank in Long Island, New York, and the murder of Giorgio Ambrosoli, a lawyer overseeing the liquidation of his banks.
Gaspare Spatuzza is a Sicilian mafioso from the Brancaccio quarter in Palermo. He was an assassin for the brothers Filippo and Giuseppe Graviano who headed the Mafia family of Brancaccio. After the arrest of the Gravianos in January 1994, he apparently succeeded them as the regent of the Mafia family. He was arrested in 1997 and started to cooperate with the judicial authorities in 2008. In his testimony, he stated that media tycoon and then prime minister Silvio Berlusconi made a deal with the Sicilian Mafia in 1993 that put the country in the hands of Cosa Nostra.
Rosario "Sal" Gambino is an Italian mobster in the Gambino crime family. He became nationally known when he and his brothers set up a multimillion dollar heroin cartel during the 1970s and 1980s. At the turn of the century he made headline news again when members of his family were suspected of trying to get him a presidential pardon through bribery.
Placido Rizzotto was an Italian partisan, socialist peasant and trade union leader from Corleone, who was kidnapped and murdered by Sicilian Mafia boss Luciano Leggio on 10 March 1948. Before he was killed, Rizzotto was performing activist work with farm laborers, trying to help them take over unfarmed land on large estates in the area. A 12-year-old shepherd, Giuseppe Letizia, witnessed Rizzotto's murder and was killed the following day with a lethal injection, made by a Mafia doctor named Michele Navarra. In the 1960s, Leggio was acquitted twice of Rizzotto's murder due to lack of evidence.
Giorgio Ambrosoli was an Italian lawyer who was gunned down while investigating the malpractice of banker Michele Sindona.
Luca Bigazzi is an Italian cinematographer. He has won seven David di Donatello for Best Cinematography awards and received fourteen nominations, making him the highest awarded artist in this category. He is the first Italian cinematographer to be nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award in the Outstanding Cinematography for a Limited Series or Movie category, for the 2016 series The Young Pope by Paolo Sorrentino. He has worked with directors such as Silvio Soldini, Mario Martone, Felice Farina, Gianni Amelio, Francesca Archibugi, Michele Placido, Abbas Kiarostami, and Paolo Sorrentino.
Umberto Ambrosoli is an Italian politician.
Gherardo Colombo is an Italian former magistrate and judge specialized in political corruption cases. He was a member of the Court of Cassation between 2005 and 2007.
Banca Rasini was an Italian bank in Milan, founded in the 1950s and acquired by Banca Popolare di Lodi in 1992. Its main claim to fame is the presence among its customers of Pippo Calò, Totò Riina, Bernardo Provenzano and Silvio Berlusconi. Silvio's father Luigi Berlusconi was an employee of the bank.
