Mafia boss texted Bastjan Dalli’s number to associate

The brother of former Nationalist minister John Dalli - Sebastian - has been mentioned in an Italian police investigation on illegal online gambling and the Sicilian Mafia, dating back to 2010.

Dalli is described as being "extraneous" to the investigation and not directly implicated.

Ilfattoquotidiano.it said it read the inquiry report from the Naples prosecutor into the arrest of 29 persons in connection with an investigation by the country's national anti-Mafia investigators.

The 'direzione nazionale antimafia' targeted the Zaza-Mazzarella clan, which was planning to open an online gaming server based in Malta. According to the police, implicated names include the clan's money launderer Ciro Smiraglia, incarcerated since February; Andrea Ricci, his business partner; and Mafia boss Gaetano Fidanzati, who died in October 2013 aged 78 and was formerly on a most wanted list from 2008 till his arrest in 2009.

According to the Naples police, it was Fidanzati who in 2010 offered up the name of Sebastian Dalli as "the brother of the prime minister" and that there was "no need to go to Fenec(h)..." to open up an online casino.

Ricci would have relayed this conversation to Smiraglia, and then later received an SMS from Fidanzati with Sebastian Dalli's mobile phone number. "Tell him you are my brother... Gae."

According to inquiring magistrate Diana De Martino, the clan's online gaming business reaped €87 billion in 2012.