CORLEONE – Lucia Riina, the youngest daughter of former Casa Nostra boss, Toto Riina, has had her latest request to receive a baby bonus refused by the National Institute of Social Services (INPS), following her failure to fulfill the necessary criteria, Il Fatto Quotidiano reported Monday.

 The youngest of four of Toto’s children, Lucia Riina and her husband made their third request for the baby bonus claiming they were miserable and in need of financial support.

 However, commissioners at the INPS denied the request made by Riina, which would have entitled her to a 1000 euros a month baby bonus.

 The official reason given for the rejection of the request is a formal defect linked to the delay and incompleteness of the application but many suspect that the true extent of their poverty is not in line with Riina’s claims.

 “If I recover a third of what I have, I am always rich,” Riina was previously heard saying in an intercepted conversation in Parma prison.

 The request comes after the Supreme Court of Cassation had recently stated that her father Toto Riina, in jail since 1993, had right to die with dignity, sparking a controversy over the possibility of Riina being placed under house arrest.

 Lucia’s first demand had been made to the municipality, applying for a 1000 euro grant from the Sicilian region, but the request was unsuccessful.  The second, which was also turned down, was made through Lucia’s husband: Vincenzo Bellomo.

 The Baby bonus is given by the Sicilian region to anyone who gives birth on the island and is earning a low income. INPS proposes a grant ranging from 80 to 160 euros a month during the baby’s first three years to any family whose income does not exceed 25,000 euros.

 Lucia Riina, who paints and sells her paintings on the internet, lives in Corleone where she returned with her mother Ninetta Bagarella in 1993, the same year her father was arrested. She married in 2008 in her hometown and accompanied down the aisle by her brother Giuseppe Salvatore, who had just left prison.

 In 2013, Lucia made her first televised appearance in an interview on Swiss television. She said she was “sorry” for the victims of her father’s actions but “honored and happy” to have her father’s name, as “any child who loves their parents does not change his surname.”

ls-jj