Salvatore Lima

Salvatore Achille Ettore Lima (Italian: [salvaˈtoːre ˈliːma]; 23 January 1928 – 12 March 1992), often referred to as Salvo Lima, was an Italian politician from Sicily who was associated with, and murdered by, the Sicilian Mafia. According to the pentito (Mafia defector) Tommaso Buscetta, Lima's father, Vincenzo Lima, was a member of the Mafia but it is not known whether Lima himself was a made member of Cosa Nostra. In the final report of the first Antimafia Commission (1963–1976), Lima was described as one of the pillars of Mafia power in Palermo.

During his long career with 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. 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 managed to gain large support from seemingly nowhere when it came to voting day. He was assassinated in 1992 by the Sicilian Mafia.

Lima was born in Palermo on 23 January 1928, the son of Vincenzo Lima, an archivist from the municipality of Palermo. In the early 1950s, after obtaining a degree in Law from the University of Palermo, he found a job at the Banco di Sicilia. Following the 1956 Italian local election, Lima was elected municipal councilor of the municipality of Palermo and became a supporter of the Christian Democracy deputy and minister Giovanni Gioia several times, adhering to Amintore Fanfani's party current and becoming councilor with delegation to public works within the municipal council led by the new Palermo mayor Luciano Maugeri. From 1958 to 1963, Lima was mayor of Palermo, his birthplace, while his fellow Christian Democrat Vito Ciancimino was assessor for public works.

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. During an investigation in 1964, Lima had to admit that he knew La Barbera, one of Palermo's most powerful mobsters. Lima's election was supported by the La Barbera clan. From 1965 to 1968, Lima was again mayor of Palermo.

As 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 Lima and the Andreotti faction of Christian Democracy. The Salvos were allowed 10 percent of the take – three times as much as the national average of 3.3 percent. According to the Mafia defector Tommaso Buscetta, Lima's father was a man of honour of the Palermo Centro Mafia family that was led by Angelo and Salvatore La Barbera, of which Buscetta's family (the Porta Nuova Mafia family) was also part. The La Barbera brothers helped Lima in getting elected. Buscetta himself met 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. Buscetta only revealed facts about the relations between mafiosi and politicians after judge Giovanni Falcone was killed in 1992. 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 that "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.

In 1968, Lima was elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies, 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.

In 1981, Palermo witnessed the outbreak of a bloody Mafia war. A new dominant group within the Mafia, headed by Salvatore Riina of Corleone, killed and replaced the traditional bosses of Palermo and their associates. The Corleonesi also turned against state representatives and politicians, such as the communist senator Pio La Torre, the Carabinieri general Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa who had been appointed as the prefect of Palermo to fight the Mafia, and Rocco Chinnici, chief prosecutor in Palermo. A mounting public outcry demanded the Christian Democrats to clean up its house in Sicily. The mayor of Palermo, one of Lima's protégés, was forced to resign, and Andreotti's Sicilian faction was on the defensive. At the Maxi Trial against the Mafia in the mid 1980s, two of Lima's closest allies, the cousins Nino and Ignazio Salvo, were convicted as members of the Mafia.