Antonio Bardellino Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

His former ally Umberto Ammaturo, who turned state witness (pentito), also said Bardellino was still alive when he gave a rare interview to La Repubblica newspaper in May 2010.

According to the official version of the story, on May 26, 1988, Antonio Bardellino was murdered by his right-hand man, Mario Iovine in his Brazilian home at Búzios, a beach side resort for the rich and famous in the State of Rio de Janeiro, as part of an internal feud within the Casalesi. However, this story has never been verified because his body was never found and the alleged assassin, Iovine, was himself murdered in Portugal in 1991 while using a phone booth. These circumstances have fuelled a legend that Bardellino is still alive, and has left power in the hands of the other families within the Casalesi clan in order to ensure the survival of his family.

The resulting war between the NF and the NCO resulted in a large number of victims from both sides, and ended with the NCO’s defeat and the victory of the NF. However, with Cutolo and the NCO out of the picture, the NF alliance soon disintegrated, with a war breaking out between the Bardellino and Nuvoletta clans towards the end of 1983.

Towards the end of 1982, thanks to a tip off from the local police, Antonio Bardellino managed to evade capture in his Rio de Janeiro apartment. Despite this setback, a meeting was soon arranged between Bardellino and the Nuvolettas in Zurich, but Aniello Nuvoletta was arrested at the rendezvous. Many other leaders of the Nuvoletta clan would have been arrested had they not suffered a chance accident in northern Italy, near the Swiss border. Bardellino was arrested in Barcelona in Spain in November 1983, but he was inexplicably released on bail and disappeared soon afterwards.

It is believed that Bardellino was the initiator of the Casalesi clan in the area of Casal di Principe and San Cipriano d’Aversa, especially due to the transformation he implemented within the clan. The rituals of affiliation remained as well as the rate of murders, but the leap in quality was the continued infiltration of the legitimate economy with the proceeds of illicit drug trafficking. This was favoured by the 1980 Irpinia earthquake and the subsequent reconstruction, which prompted the families to create a consortium for their companies that performed the work of earth-moving and construction. Another factor was the great entrepreneurial ability of Bardellino himself. He owned a fish flour import-export business together with other clans, which in fact covered up a Brazilian cocaine smuggling operation. Besides trafficking cocaine, he was involved in the heroin trade with Lorenzo Nuvoletta and Ciro Mazzarella, supplying the Sicilian Mafia.

In the 1980s, Bardellino realized that cocaine, not heroin, would become the more profitable drug and organized a trafficking operation smuggling it from Latin America to Aversa via his front business. Heroin was smuggled as well, and shipments to the Gambino crime family were concealed inside espresso filters. When one shipment was intercepted by the authorities, Bardellino reportedly called John Gotti and told him; “Don’t worry, now we’re sending twice as much the other way”.

Bardellino had close and powerful contacts within the Sicilian Mafia, initially with the Porta Nuova family of Pippo Calò. He was one of the few Camorra bosses who were also initiated into Cosa Nostra. Together with Lorenzo Nuvoletta and Michele Zaza, he was sworn in to seal a pact on cigarette smuggling in 1975.

Antonio Bardellino (Italian pronunciation: [anˈtɔːnjo bardelˈliːno]; May 4, 1945 – May 26, 1988) was a powerful Neapolitan Camorrista and boss of the Casalesi clan, having a prominent role in the organized crime in the province of Caserta during the 1980s. He was one of the last of the old-style Camorra godfathers.