Minister Anton Refalo said he did not know who notorious Sicilian Mafia boss Totò Riina was when confronted by an Italian journalist over allegations that a Gozo property he leases had once been used by the fugitive mobster, as civil society group Repubblika accused the minister of evading legitimate questions and demanded full transparency.

The issue was raised in an investigative programme aired on RAI 3's Lo Stato Delle Cose on Monday night, which examined Riina's alleged connections to Gozo and focused on a seafront property in Qala that Refalo currently holds under a long lease.

In footage shown on the programme, the agriculture minister is approached at the front door of the Qala house and asked about claims that it had served as a hideout for Riina.

"I do not know who that is," Refalo replied when asked about the feared Mafia boss, who was widely known in Italy as "il capo dei capi" - the boss of bosses.

When asked how long he had held the property, Refalo responded, "Why do you want to know?" before the journalist identified himself.

He later said he did not know when he took over the house and said he did not know whether Riina had ever stayed there.

Riina, who died in 2017, is regarded as one of Sicily's most dangerous Mafia bosses. He led the Corleonesi faction during the 1980s and 1990s and is believed to have ordered the murders of up to 200 people, including anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. Convicted in absentia in 1993, he was captured that same year after more than two decades as a fugitive.

The television programme followed a report in La Stampa which claimed that Riina hid from Italian authorities in a sea-view villa in Qala that is now held by the Maltese minister.

Refalo has denied owning the property, saying instead that he has leased it since 2002, nine years after Riina's arrest. According to documentation seen by Times of Malta, the last known contract of sale for the house dates back to May 1979, when it was sold to an Italian woman from Brescia in northern Italy. Refalo later entered into a long lease agreement under which he was obliged to pay annual rent and renovate the property, which was in a dilapidated state at the time.

Reacting to the developments, Repubblika said Refalo's response had raised more questions than it answered.

In a strongly worded statement, the group described the minister's reaction as "pathetic" and said his claim not to know who Riina was amounted to a stark example of omertà - the code of silence traditionally associated with the Mafia.

Repubblika said that attempts to defend Refalo by pointing out that Riina's alleged visits to Malta and Gozo took place when the Nationalist Party was in government missed the point.

"If Malta was a refuge for Mafia figures, there is no excuse for avoiding that historical reality," the group said, arguing that the country should confront its past and learn from it.

But the more serious issue, Repubblika added, was not simply the historical allegation that Malta may have served as a refuge for organised crime figures, but the attitude of a sitting minister who, in its words, appeared to believe he had no duty to answer legitimate journalistic questions about whether a property he occupies was once used by one of the world's most notorious criminals.

The group also took issue with Refalo's reported attitude that the matter was "none of his business," saying that such indifference reflects the same culture of silence that allows criminal networks to thrive.

"The culture of 'it's not my business' is the omertà that gives power to the Mafia," Repubblika said, adding that indifference in public office amounts to complicity and helps sustain the very systems that anti-Mafia investigators spent their lives fighting.

It stressed that while the alleged facts date back decades, the obligation to denounce and confront them remains urgent in the present.

Repubblika went further, arguing that Refalo's apparent ignorance of who Riina was should itself disqualify him from public office, given Riina's notoriety and responsibility for hundreds of killings.

The group called on Refalo to publish the contract through which he acquired the rights to the Qala property, saying this would help shed more light on who may have facilitated Riina's alleged presence in Malta.