She is accused of aggravated mafia association and receiving stolen goods.

The woman has been in prison since March last year.

According to the investigators, she helped her brother evade capture and managed, on his behalf, the ‘cash box’ of the mafia ‘family’ and the transmission network of the ‘pizzini’ (orders).

Her involvement allowed the mafia leader to maintain relations with his men during his long period on the run.

Messina Denaro was caught in mid-January last year while leaving a clinic where he was being treated for cancer in Palermo.

He died in a hospital in L’Aquila on September 25 aged 62.

Messina Denaro had been convicted for his involvement in dozens of murders, including the 1992 Cosa Nostra bombings that killed anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

Long idolised by younger mafiosi for his ruthlessness and playboy-like charisma, Messina Denaro sealed a reputation for brutality by murdering a rival Trapani boss and strangling his three-months-pregnant girlfriend.

The boss, who reportedly enjoyed orgies with Palermo women while on the run, once said he could have filled a cemetery with those he had killed.

He was reportedly helped to dodge police by a “middle class Mafia”, not only around his fief at Trapani, but also around Sicily, Italian police have said.

Palermo prosecutors said that the iron-clad omertà that enabled the boss to remain a fugitive for so long is continuing many months after his death.

Earlier this week, police arrested three men including a Sicilian architect for helping Denaro evade police.

The architect allegedly managed cash under the post-COVID EU-funded National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP).

The three arrested Wednesday were the architect, from Limbiate near Milan, a Mazara del Vallo hospital radiology technician also accused of mafia association, and a third person accused of external involvement in mafia association.

It takes the number of people arrested for allegedly helping the mobster since his capture on January 16, 2023, up to 14, including four who have been convicted.

ANSA