He said he never knew his patient was Matteo Messina Denaro, the general practitioner Alfonso Tumbarello, arrested on Tuesday for external complicity and aggravated ideological forgery, questioned today by the investigating judge in the Pagliarelli prison.
The doctor, whose prescriptions and prescriptions – registered to the front man Andrea Bonafede – allowed the boss to undergo numerous medical treatments, protecting his fugitive status, allegedly claimed to have known that Bonafede had been diagnosed with cancer and to have limited himself, without examining him, to prescribing treatments and tests delivered via his cousin.
The Bonafede Patient/Messina Money) would also have asked that the disease not be known, a request that would have – according to Tumbarello – also explained some behaviors such as, for example, not physically showing up at the doctor's office.
The doctor also allegedly admitted to having acted as an intermediary between the former mayor of Castelvetrano Antonio Vaccarino and Messina Denaro's brother, Salvatore, who resides in Campobello di Mazara, the town where he practiced as a general practitioner and the place where the last hideout of the fugitive boss arrested in Palermo on January 16 was found.
Also questioned this morning was Andrea Bonafede, namesake and cousin of the man who gave up his identity to the boss: during the preliminary hearing before investigating judge Alfredo Montalto, he also claimed that he had never suspected that the real patient was actually Matteo Messina Denaro and that he had simply traveled back and forth to accommodate the requests of his cousin, a patient of doctor Alfonso Tumbarello.
Article published on 9 February 2023 - 19:25
