Italy Police Arrest Top Aide To Jailed Mafia Boss

Lipari was a right-hand man to Provenzano, head of the Corleonese clan who was arrested in 2006 after some 43 years on the run.

Sicilian police said on Wednesday they had arrested Giuseppe Lipari, a 72-year-old man suspected of having managed the business affairs of jailed top Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano.

Lipari was a right-hand man to Provenzano, head of the Corleonese clan who was arrested in 2006 after some 43 years on the run.

They said Lipari helped Provenzano run the Mafia's extortion rackets, keep up contacts with corrupt local politicians and was a front man for selling properties that belonged to Provenzano and other Mafia members.

Lipari already had a criminal record for Mafia activity and several members of his family, including two of his children, had already been arrested.

Investigators said Lipari and his family helped Provenzano run the Mafia while he was on the run.

Police are still unscrambling the codes that Provenzano, now in solitary confinement in one of Italy's most secure prisons, used to communicate with his his crime network.

While he was at large, Provenzano sent fragments of paper called "pizzini" to send coded orders to his lieutenants.

He assigned secret numbers for his accomplices and may have used codes taken from his Bible, found brimming with homemade tabs, underlining and annotations when he was arrested.