Mafia boss arrested after 11 years for celebrating Napoli championship
On August 5, Italian authorities announced that they had arrested Vincenzo La Porta, who was on the list of 100 most dangerous fugitives in Italy. The 60-year-old mafia boss was arrested while driving a scooter in Corfu, Greece.
La Porta is one of the senior figures of Camorra - the largest and oldest criminal organization in Naples and Italy. This guy has been convicted of criminal association, tax evasion and fraud.
Napoli police said they were monitoring La Porta's online activity, including financial activities, and were waiting for the mafia boss to make a mistake that could reveal his whereabouts.
A few weeks ago, La Porta appeared in public to celebrate Napoli winning Serie A in the 2022-2023 season. Name investigators spotted the wanted subject in a photo of people celebrating at the restaurant, in which La Porta was holding up a blue Napoli scarf.
The subject was wearing a hat, but investigators were sure it was La Porta. After that, the Italian police went to Corfu to track, trace and find the subject's whereabouts, with support from Greek police. They did not specify when the arrest of this criminal was made, but said officers stopped La Porta in Corfu while the tycoon was riding a motorbike.
"The passion for football and the Napoli club betrayed La Porta. With the championship, La Porta could not resist celebrating," the police said.
La Porta is being held in a Greek prison awaiting extradition to Italy, where he will serve a 14-year and four-month sentence.
Last season, Napoli won 90 points, 16 points ahead of Lazio and won the Scudetto. Napoli won the Serie A for the third time, but the first time in 33 years since the generation of Diego Maradona, Careca, Ciro Ferrera, Gianfranco Zola ascended the throne in 1990. This is the longest interval between two coronations in the world. history of Serie A, only after AS Roma with 41 years when winning in 1942 and 1983. The first Serie A championship of the largest city in Southern Italy also belonged to the Maradona generation, in the 1986-1987 season.
This summer, Napoli bought Giacomo Raspadori, Giovanni Simeone and recruited goalkeeper Elia Caprile. On the contrary, they parted ways with Andrea Petagna, Sebastiano Luperto, Kim Min-jae, Elia Caprile. The owner of the Maradona stadium also appointed Rudi Garcia - former coach of the Saudi Arabian club Al Nassr, to replace Luciano Spalletti - who terminated his contract a year early because of a conflict with president De Laurentiis.
In the pre-season, Napoli won Anaune Val di Non 6-1, drew SPAL 1-1, beat Hatayspor 4-0, drew Girona 1-1 and have two matches left against Augsburg on August 6, Apollon Limassol on August 11 . Napoli will start the journey to defend the Serie A throne with a trip to Frosinone on August 19.
