Salvatore Lima

Salvatore Achille Ettore Lima (23 January 1928 – 12 March 1992) was an Italian politician from Sicily who was associated with, and murdered by, the Sicilian Mafia.

He is often just referred to as Salvo Lima.

According to the pentito (Mafia defector) Tommaso Buscetta, Lima's father, Vincenzo Lima, was a member of the Mafia but is not known whether Lima himself was a "made member" of Cosa Nostra.

During his long career with the Christian Democracy (DC) that began in the 1950s, Lima was first allied with the faction of Amintore Fanfani and after 1964 with the one of Giulio Andreotti, seven times prime minister and a member of almost every post-war Italian government.

Between 1951 and 1961 the population of Palermo had risen by 100,000.

Under Lima and Ciancimino an unprecedented construction boom hit the city.

They supported Mafia-allied building contractors such as Palermo’s leading construction entrepreneur Francesco Vassallo – a former cart driver hauling sand and stone in a poor district of Palermo.

Vassallo was connected to mafiosi like Angelo La Barbera and Tommaso Buscetta.

In five years, over 4,000 building licences were signed, more than half of them in the names of three pensioners who had no connection with construction at all.

This period was later referred to as the "Sack of Palermo" because the construction boom led to the destruction of the city's green belt, and villas that gave it architectural grace, to make way for characterless and shoddily constructed apartment blocks.

In the meantime, Palermo’s historical centre was allowed to crumble.

From 1958 to 1963, Lima was mayor of Palermo, his birthplace, while his fellow Christian Democrat Vito Ciancimino was assessor for public works.

In the final report of the first Italian Antimafia Commission (1963–1976), Lima was described as one of the pillars of Mafia power in Palermo.

In 1964, during an investigation, Lima had to admit that he knew Angelo La Barbera, one of Palermo's most powerful mobsters.

Lima's election was supported by the La Barbera clan.

However, already in 1964 one of Falcone’s predecessors, judge Cesare Terranova, unequivocally demonstrated Lima’s connections with the La Barberas.

In an indictment in 1964, Terranova wrote: "it is clear that Angelo and Salvatore La Barbera (well-known bosses in the Palermo area) ... knew former mayor Salvatore Lima and maintained relations in such a way as to ask for favours. ... The undeniable contacts of the La Barbera mafiosi with the one who was the first citizen of Palermo ... constitute a confirmation of ... the infiltration of the Mafia in several sectors of public life."

Nevertheless, Lima was allowed to continue in politics as if nothing had happened.

From 1965-1968 Lima again was mayor of Palermo.

Lima arranged an unusually lucrative concession to collect taxes in Sicily to Antonio Salvo and Ignazio Salvo, two wealthy mafia-cousins from the town of Salemi in the province of Trapani, in exchange for their loyalty to Salvo Lima and the Andreotti faction of the DC.

The Salvo’s were allowed 10 percent of the take – three times as much as the national average of 3.3 percent.

According to the "pentito" (Mafia defector) Tommaso Buscetta, Vincenzo Lima (Lima’s father) was a "man of honour" of the Palermo Centro Mafia family that was led by Salvatore and Angelo La Barbera of which Buscetta's family – the Porta Nuova Mafia family – was part as well.

The La Barbera brothers helped Salvo Lima in getting elected.

Buscetta himself met Salvo Lima many times and they became good friends.

Every year Lima provided Buscetta with tickets for the Teatro Massimo in Palermo.

At the time, the public and authorities did not know these connections.

That shift earned him a seat in the national parliament in 1968.

Lima was often referred to as Andreotti's "proconsul" on Sicily.

Under Andreotti, Lima once held a cabinet post.

At the time of his death, he was a member of the European Parliament.

Lima rarely spoke in public or campaigned during elections but usually would manage to gain large support from seemingly nowhere when it came to voting day.

In 1968 Lima was elected to the Chamber of Deputies (Italian: Camera dei Deputati), suddenly surpassing established politicians in Sicily.

The alliance between Lima and Andreotti proved beneficial to both.

Although Andreotti had a strong electoral base in and around Rome, his faction had no power base in the rest of Italy.

With Lima, who at some time was in control of 25 percent of all party members in Sicily, the Andreotti faction turned into a truly national group.

While Andreotti had been an important government minister before his alliance with Lima, he now became one of the most powerful politicians in Italy.

Andreotti became prime minister for the first time in 1972.

In 1974 Lima became Under-Secretary of the Budget.

In 1979 Lima was elected in the European Parliament.

Buscetta only revealed facts about the relations between mafiosi and politicians after judge Giovanni Falcone was killed in 1992.