Gianni Nicchi

Giovanni "Gianni" Nicchi (Turin, 16 February 1981) is a member of the Sicilian Mafia. Despite his young age – his nickname is U picciutteddu (the little boy) – he is considered to be one of the leading mafiosi of Cosa Nostra in Palermo. He was on the "most wanted list" of the Italian ministry of the Interior since 2006, until his arrest on 5 December 2009.

Gianni Nicchi is the son of Luigi Nicchi, a mafioso who is jailed for life. He is considered to be the current "reggente" (regent) of the Pagliarelli mandamento, after the arrest of his godfather Antonio Rotolo on 20 June 2006, two months after the arrest of Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano. Authorities issued 52 arrest warrants against the top echelon of Cosa Nostra in the city of Palermo (Operation Gotha). Nicchi escaped arrest.

"Gianni is my godson (Italian: figlioccio), but I tell you, for me it is as if he was my son," Rotolo was overheard saying to another mafioso. "From this day on, you have to know that when you talk to him it is as if you talk to me. It is the same." In other bugged conversations, police listened in how Rotolo instructed Nicchi how to kill a person. They also discussed how to extort Chinese shopkeepers in Palermo.

Despite his age, other mafiosi treated Nicchi with respect. The pentito Francesco Campanella recalled when he was introduced to Nicchi by Nicola Mandalà, Mafia boss of Villabate, in 2004. "He treated him with high esteem," Campanella noticed, and Mandalà told him: "you don’t realise who that is, even though they call him u picciutteddu." Campanella understood that the young man was already regarded as an important figure in Cosa Nostra.

Rotolo was worried about the return of members of the Inzerillo family to Palermo and fell out with rival boss Salvatore Lo Piccolo over a request from the Inzerillo’s to be allowed to return to Palermo. The Inzerillo family had been one of the clans that was decimated by the Corleonesi during the Second Mafia War in the 1980s and had been forced into exile in the United States with their relatives in the New York City-based Gambino crime family. Rotolo had been part of the Mafia clans that had attacked the Inzerillo clan and had personally killed one of them. He was opposed to Lo Piccolo’s permission for the return of the Inzerillo’s, fearing revenge.

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Wikipedia