Birkirkara player Fabrizio Miccoli linked to Palermo Mafia

Fabrizio Miccoli of Palermo (now a player with Birkirkara FC) cries theatrically for the television cameras after he was heard, in telephone conversations with Mafia associates recorded by the police, insulting national hero and murdered anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone in June 2013.

Mauro Lauricella, whose father Salvatore Lauricella known as Scintilluni is a Mafia boss, on a visit to Malta. He is very close friends with Birkirkara player Fabrizio Miccoli and prosecutors say that Miccoli engaged him to collect protection money from a nightclub on behalf of the club physiotherapist.

Birkirkara player Fabrizio Miccoli (left) with Mauro Lauricella, son of Palermo Mafia boss Salvatore Lauricella known as Scintilluni.

Birkirkara player Fabrizio Miccoli – who is from Palermo and who used to play for that city’s team – was in the news yesterday after being “insulted” by a Westham player during Thursday evening’s match at the Ta’ Qali stadium.

But the real news about Miccoli is that he has links to the Palermo Mafia which have been covered in detail by the Italian press only recently, particularly the national daily newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano in an article published last April, which is the source of the following information.

The Prosecutor of Palermo has accused Fabrizio Miccoli of having engaged Mauro Lauricella, son of Palermo Mafia boss Salvatore Lauricella known as Scintilluni and a collector of extortion money, to ‘collect’ from the owners of a nightclub sums of money owed to a man who used to be a physiotherapist at the football club Palermo Calcio. Published photographs show Fabrizio Miccoli and Mauro Lauricella to be very close. They also show Lauricella on visits to Malta and wearing an I LOVE MALTA T-shirt.

Miccoli became close friends with Mauro Lauricella when they played for Palermo.

The investigation has gone on for the past two years and has already led to the arrests of Mauro Lauricella and Joachim Alioto, known as zu ‘Gino. The two are accused of collecting extortion money for the Mafia. In the 1980s, Alioto was reportedly already engaged by Tommaso Buscetta as a “tax collector” for some Mafia families.

Two years ago, Miccoli had cried theatrically in front of reporters and television cameras over a separate matter, saying that he “apologised” for being mixed up in these things and that he “doesn’t like what the Mafia does”. In telephone conversations with Mafia-linked associates, recorded by the police, he had been caught speaking pejoratively about anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanne Falcone, a national hero but particularly celebrated in his home city of Palermo, who had been murdered in a spectacular fashion by the Mafia in 1992.

“I am not a mafioso, I do not like the things the Mafia do,” Miccoli said in June 2013, after the news broke about his wiretapped conversations and he had been questioned by the Palermo prosecutor for four hours.

In another wiretapped conversation, Miccoli was heard ringing Francesco Guttadauro, a nephew of Cosa Nosta’s ‘boss of bosses’ Matteo Messina Denaro, who has been a fugitive for the last two decades, to warn him: “Don’t come to the field. There are new police officers.”

The Carabinieri had also recorded Miccoli in the company of Guttadauro at a meeting with Paolo Forte, one of Messina Denaro’s allies.

The Birkirkara player Fabrizio Miccoli’s suspect relationships also include, Il Fatto Quotidiano reports, Luigi Giardina, whose brother Gianni Nicchi, known as ‘u Tiramisu’, was arrested in 2009, and Nicola Milano, boss of the Porta Nuova district.

Il Fatto Quotidiano reports: “I have only tried to behave like a normal person, meeting everyone without questioning their origins,” Miccoli said by way of justification.

You can see the commonalities with Maltese reasoning.

This video shows Palermo Mafia boss Salvatore Lauricella being arrested in 2011:

This Sicilian video is a mocking salute to Mauro Lauricella’s (Salvatore’s son) close friendship with player Fabrizio Miccoli:

This news video shows Miccoli crying theatrically and apologising for his behaviour. He was all over the news after, in telephone conversations recorded by the Italian police, he was heard insulting and speaking pejoratively about murdered anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone. Falcone, who was from Palermo, was blown up by the Mafia with his wife and three bodyguards when a roadside bomb was detonated as his car drove by just outside the city.