Corleonesi clan

Corleonesi

Luciano Leggio at a court appearance in 1974
Membership	Sicilian Mafia
Notable members	Luciano Leggio, Totò Riina, Calogero Bagarella, Bernardo Provenzano, Leoluca Bagarella, Giovanni Brusca

The Corleonesi are a faction within the Sicilian Mafia that dominated Cosa Nostra in the 1980s and the 1990s. The informal name Corleonesi was applied by the media and government because its most important leaders came from the town of Corleone, first Luciano Leggio and later Totò Riina, Leoluca Bagarella, Riina’s brother-in-law, and Bernardo Provenzano.

The Corleonesi coalition managed to take over the Sicilian Mafia Commission and imposed a quasi-dictatorship over Cosa Nostra, waging war against rival factions (also known as the Second Mafia War) from 1978–1983. The more established Mafia factions in the city of Palermo grossly underestimated the mafiosi from Corleone and often referred to the Corleonesi, in Sicilian language, as i viddani – "the peasants" or peri 'ncritati – "muddy feet".

Corleonesi affiliates were not restricted to mafiosi of Corleone. The Corleone Mafia bosses initiated “men of honour”, not necessarily from Corleone, whose status was kept hidden from the other members of the Corleone cosca and other Mafia Families. Members of other Mafia Families who sided with Riina and Provenzano were called Corleonesi as well, forming a coalition that dominated the Mafia in the 1980s and 1990s, that can be considered as a kind of parallel Cosa Nostra. (Giovanni Brusca from the San Giuseppe Jato Mafia Family was considered to be part of the Corleonesi faction for example)

The pentito (Mafia turncoat) Antonino Calderone provided first-hand accounts of the leaders of the Corleonesi: Luciano Leggio, Totò Riina and Bernardo Provenzano. About Leggio, Calderone said: