base of operations to the South of France to avoid harassment from Italian authorities (particularly new laws which allow the seizure of assets whose origin cannot be accounted for). Until his arrest in Nice on March 14, 1989 (following the discovery of a lorry carrying 500,000 packets of contraband cigarettes), he appears to have engaged in top-level criminal activity, apparently hosting a Camorra drugs summit at the Elysée Palace hotel in Nice in February 1989. In 1990 Zaza's associates, in particular his father-in-law Liguori, almost managed to buy the casino at Menton, on the French side of the Franco-Italian border. In July 1991, a French court sentenced him to three years for cigarette smuggling. Benefiting from a French law that facilitates the release of prisoners who already have served half their sentence, Zaza was released in November 1991, while Italian authorities asked for his extradition for Mafia association, drug trafficking and cigarette smuggling. Last arrest and death In March 1993, police dismantled a Cosa Nostra-Camorra ring of 39 people involved in cocaine trafficking and money laundering in Italy, France and Germany (Operation Green Sea). On May 12 next, Zaza was arrested in Villeneuve-Loubet on the French Riviera near Nice in Southern France. He was extradited from France to Italy on March 27, 1994. On July 18, 1994, he died of a heart attack in a Rome hospital where he had been transferred from the Rebibbia prison. His nephew Ciro Mazzarella, who had remained in Naples to control the territory, succeeded Zaza as the head of the clan, which started to be called Mazzarella clan, and no longer Zaza clan. Immense wealth Due to his illicit trafficking enterprises, Zaza became immensely wealthy. When he was arrested police found cheques worth US$950,000 in his pockets. By 1989 the US Treasury Department estimated his assets in the US alone were worth US$3.2 million. At the same time the FBI also estimated that he had US$15 million deposited in Swiss banks. His daughter was the nominal owner of a ten-bedroom villa in Beverly Hills, a Paris flat, a villa just outside Nice and real estate in Naples. According to newspaper reports his wealth amounted to 700 billion lire (US$700 million) at the time of his death. He was survived by his wife Anna Maria Liguori, a former university student with a French mother, and three children, living in Rome with their mother, attending the