(ANSA) - Lecce, October 16 - Italian anti-mafia police in the southern Italian city of Lecce, located in the heel of Italy's boot-shaped peninsula, on Tuesday seized assets worth 1.2 million euros from a mafia convict now accused of tax-dodging. Fifty-year-old Giancarlo Capobianco, a businessman from the town of Francavilla Fontana, was previously given an eight-year prison sentence in lower court for mafia racketeering as well as illegal acquisition and possession of weapons of war for his alleged involvement with a clan of the Sacra Corona Unita (SCU) mafia. On Tuesday, police confiscated a family villa with a private park, two apartments, a country cottage, farmland, buildable lots in an industrial zone, four vehicles, company stakes and valuable furniture. Investigators believe there is a 800,000-euro gap between the income declared by Capobianco and his relatives compared to the luxurious patrimony they have managed to possess. Known as Big Uncle Carlo, Capobianco was never formally initiated into the SCU, allegedly because he was more useful as a someone "above suspicion", investigators say.
Capobianco was fingered by informers Ercole Penna and Cosimo Giovanni Guarini as the SCU's representative in the town of Francavilla Fontana, according to law enforcement sources. Capobianco is among five people for whom arrest warrants were issued on October 5 for trafficking Kalashnikov rifles and hand grenades, purchased for 20,000 euros from alleged members of the Russian secret service.