Gaetano Fidanzati

Fidanzati and his four brothers hailed from Palermo's Arenella neighborhood. They formed a Mafia clan, said to be among the most heavily involved in international drug trafficking.[3] He reportedly innovated the practice of exchanging heroin for cocaine to avoid money trails. The exchange rate with the American Mafia – particularly the Gambinos – was one kilogram of heroin for three kilograms of cocaine.[4]

In the 1960s, the clan moved north to Milan and allied with Mafia boss Gerlando Alberti's gang. In 1968, Fidanzatti, along with most of 113 other alleged top Mafia members, was acquitted of multiple charges at 1960s Sicilian Mafia trials#The Trial of the 114. He was internally banished, and was moved to Naples, where he met Michele Zaza of the Camorra, with whom he arranged to smuggle cigarettes and, later, heroin.[5]

In 1987, at the Maxi Trial against the Mafia in Palermo, Fidanzati was sentenced to twelve years in prison for drug trafficking, but was soon free on a procedural technicality and fled.[3]

The pentito (turncoat) Gaspare Mutolo recalled Fidanzati approaching him during the Maxi Trial in 1986, asking if he could find more Thai heroin and proposing "we'll send it to Canada, to Cuntrera and Caruana, everything you want, either a 100 or 200 kilos, every amount you can send them in Canada, because they control everything over there."[6]

On 22 February 1990 Fidanzati was arrested in Buenos Aires, and extradited to Italy in April 1993.[3][4] Over the next years, he was in and out of prison on drug trafficking charges.[7]

In December 2008, after a nine-month investigation dubbed "Operation Perseus" (after the Greek mythological hero who beheaded Medusa), police indicted 94 Mafiosi, including Fidanzati, to prevent them from reconstituting a new governing board for the Mafia, known as the Sicilian Mafia Commission. At the time, he was released from prison on health grounds and serving his sentence under house arrest. As head of the Resuttana mandamento, he would have been a member of the Commission.[8]

Milan Flying Squad chief Alessandro Giuliano (son of Boris) arrested Fidanzati in the city on 5 December 2009.[2][9]

On 5 October 2013 Fidanzati died at age 78.[1] A cause of death has not been released.

• List of fugitives from justice who are no longer sought

• Sterling, Claire (1990). Octopus. How the long reach of the Sicilian Mafia controls the global narcotics trade, New York: Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-671-73402-4