The small Sicilian town that is home to Europe's most wanted mobster owes a record €42 million ($71m) in unpaid taxes after the Mafia-infiltrated Administration turned a blind eye to years of outstanding bills.
For five years, 65 per cent of Castelvetrano's residents never paid taxes, yet life plodded on normally in this quiet area near Trapani.
In the heartland of the Sicilian Mafia, where Matteo Messina Denaro, the 55-year-old mob boss, is believed to be hiding out, residents ran a bigger risk not paying the "pizzo" (Mafia protection money) than not paying their tax bills, the latter rarely carrying any consequences.
In fact, the Mafia had so thoroughly infiltrated city management of bids, permits and administrative tasks that Italy's President issued a decree last year to dissolve the entire Castelvetrano city administration and appoint a special commission to clean things up.
The missing taxes, discovered in an Interior Ministry accounting review, earned Castelvetrano the record for the largest municipal debt in Italy. From 2012 to 2017, tax notices went unpaid, either because they were returned to sender or because residents simply ignored them. City officials turned a blind eye, knowing the cases would expire after five years under the statute of limitations.
