Managers of ex-Mafia assets
Hot property: the survival of the 1,600 businesses confiscated from the Mafia , many of which are in Palermo, above, depends on deploying skills and judgment such as recognising that local people may depend on them for jobs If running a large hotel in the middle of a financial crisis and a shrinking market sounds difficult, try pulling it off when the 14-storey building has been confiscated from the Mafia . “Call it fearlessness or perhaps stupidity, I’m not sure which it was, but I took this on as I would any other job,” says Luigi Turchio, the soft-spoken court-appointed administrator of the San Paolo Palace hotel and conference centre in Sicily . Intimidation from the local crime boss and finding that the crime boss’s mistress was on the staff are just a few of the challenges Mr Turchio has faced in the 19 years since a court appointed him to manage the 283-room hotel on the edge of the Mafia -infested Brancaccio neighbourhood of Palermo, the Sicilian capital