He has been dubbed Sandokan after a popular 1970s television series starring Kabir Bedi because of his thick, dark beard.

Schiavone was involved in several bloody clan wars of the Camorra in which dozens of people were killed in the Naples area in the past decades.

After more than five years on the run, he was arrested on 11 July 1998, in his hideout – a secret apartment behind a sliding wall of granite in his Naples villa, equipped with high tech tools.

The mayor of Naples, Antonio Bassolino, praised the local police, and said, "the head of one of the most dangerous criminal clans in southern Italy has been arrested."

[3][8] The Casalesi clan gathered immense wealth with skimming of public contracts for the construction of the A1 highway Rome-Naples and the prison in Santa Maria Capua Vetere.

They also were active in waste management from the north of Italy in Caserta, and the distribution racket of dairy products by Parmalat and Cirio.

Michele Zagaria, another Casalesi bosses, got the same sentence but was on the run and was included in the list of most wanted fugitives in Italy,[11][12] until his arrest on December 7, 2011.

[26] However, already in the following July the Naples Prosecutor's Office decided to interrupt the collaboration process since Schiavone did not provide useful statements during the interrogations and it was therefore ordered that he return to article 41-bis.