The drug lord had bought a helicopter to escape from prison.

Rome – A helicopter glides over the Rovigo prison courtyard, picking up the mafia boss and heading straight for the Croatian coast. It's not the script of an '80s action movie, but the pinnacle plan that Leandro Bennato, considered the head of the Roman drug trafficking ring, was orchestrating from his cell.

A €200 scheme, foiled just in time by the Carabinieri and the DAP, which opened the doors to the 41-bis regime for Michele Senese's heir.

A 200 euro tax evasion

The plan was ambitious and costly. Bennato had already set aside the sum necessary to secure his escape: two hundred thousand euros for a plane ready to take off from the Veneto penitentiary. But the escape wasn't meant to stop with him.

The drug lord intended the vessel to be used for a second trip: to free Raul Esteban Calderon, known as "Messi," the trusted hitman accused of the murder of Fabrizio Piscitelli, better known as Diabolik. A criminal axis that was supposed to reunite across the Adriatic, far from Italian justice.

The myth of the “Gang des Postiches”

For Bennato, inspiration came from the past. In 1986, when he was just six years old, crime news was rocked by the escape of André Bellaiche, a robber from the notorious "Gang des Postiches," who escaped from Rebibbia prison aboard a helicopter that landed on the prison's sports field. It was an image that must have remained etched in the boss's mind, to the point that he attempted to replicate it almost forty years later, convinced that money and power could still buy the impossible.

Remote control of crime from prison

Despite his detention, which began in April 2023, Bennato had never stopped calling the shots. From Tolmezzo to Rovigo, the boss ran his business via cleverly concealed cell phones: in June 2024, officers found two hidden in a false bottom between the wastebasket and a cavity in the wall.

From his cell, a thousand kilometers away from the capital's drug dealing hubs, Bennato continued to dictate the law, dictating the price of cocaine and maintaining a monopoly on the trade in Tor Bella Monaca, leading what magistrates call "the most dangerous gang in Rome."

The Whisper in Cell 18

The endgame began on the night of May 5th. A prison officer, passing by cell 18, occupied only by Bennato, heard a voice. The boss was talking on the phone. Despite the man's violent reaction, who attempted to intimidate the guard into giving up, the investigation accelerated.

A week later, on May 12th, the decisive wiretap: "He was planning his escape, he had arranged for the helicopter." That phone call was the final act of his career as a "free-roaming prisoner." For the Anti-Mafia prosecutors, there was no longer any doubt: Bennato's danger to society and his ability to coordinate crimes required maximum isolation. The flight to Croatia remained just a dream; the reality now was harsh prison.