As a state witness, Giuffrè provided information about the ties of Giulio Andreotti, Silvio Berlusconi, Salvatore Cuffaro, and Marcello Dell'Utri with the Mafia.
He also testified on the role of the Mafia in the murder of Roberto Calvi and their plot to kill the then Antimafia Commission president Giuseppe Lumia.
He had a top position within Cosa Nostra, and his rise in the Mafia ran parallel to the ascension of the Corleonesi clan headed by Salvatore Riina and later by Bernardo Provenzano, to whom he was particularly close.
His collaboration updated investigators' knowledge and provided a new interpretation of the sensitive issue of Cosa Nostra's relations with politics in the early 1990s.
[6] Among the other members of the directorate were Salvatore Lo Piccolo from Palermo; Benedetto Spera from Belmonte Mezzagno; Salvatore Rinella from Trabia; Giuseppe Balsano from Monreale; Matteo Messina Denaro from Castelvetrano;[7][8] Vincenzo Virga from Trapani; and Andrea Manciaracina from Mazara del Vallo.
[9] Messina Denaro, who was the latest fugitive of the Mafia's massacres until his arrest in January 2023,[10] reportedly asked for the execution of pentiti like Giuffrè.
The Mafia's fallout with Christian Democracy became clear when Salvatore Lima, their strong man in Sicily, was killed in March 1992.
A new era opened with a new political force on the horizon which provided the guarantees that the Christian Democracy were no longer able to deliver.
Giuffrè said that Bernardo Provenzano told him that they "were in good hands" with Dell'Utri, whom he described as a "serious and trustworthy person", and was close to Berlusconi.
Bontade's contact at Berlusconi's villa was the late Vittorio Mangano, a convicted mafioso who was alleged to have worked there as a stableman.