ITALY: Canadian mobster behind Mafia operations

TU THANH HA

Globe and Mail Update with Reuters and AP

October 23, 2007 at 10:52 AM EDT

Montreal — Even from behind bars, Canada's most powerful Mafia boss still managed to operate a transnational drug smuggling and money laundering schemes, the Italian authorities allege, following the arrest Tuesday of at least a dozen people.

The pre-dawn arrests are the latest setbacks to hit Vito Rizzuto — who is identified in Canadian court documents as the " godfather of the Italian Mafia in Montreal" — and his 83-year-old father Nicolo.

Italian say the father and son pair were leading figures despite being detained for years.

"From prison they pulled the strings of their Italian colonies," anti-mafia official Col. Paolo La Forgia told the Associated Press.

Among those arrested in Italy were two bank workers who managed the clan's Swiss bank accounts, police said.

This allegation mirrors those outlined in past court documents filed in Montreal, which detail a 1994 investigation by Swiss officials probing whether Mr. Rizzuto, his mother Libertina, and their acquaintances laundered millions of dollars through banks in Lugano, Geneva and Lausanne.

Already, two years ago, Colonel La Forgia told a press conference that Italy's anti-Mafia police issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Rizzuto, alleging that he tried to invest $6.4 million in laundered money in a $7 billion project to build a suspension bridge between Sicily and the mainland.

In the latest crackdown, Italian authorities seized 150 million euros in asset, both in bank accounts and real estate.

Since January of 2004 Mr. Rizzuto has been under arrest. Detained in Montreal and New York, he pleaded guilty to racketeering charges relating to the murder of three captains of the Bonnano crime family and was transferred to a maximum-security penitentiary in Colorado to serve a 10-year sentence.

Even after the younger Mr. Rizzuto's arrest, the family business continued, focusing on drug smuggling, extortion and illegal gambling, according to court filings in a major crackdown against the organization's top leaders.

RCMP affidavits filed in Montreal allege a succession of cocaine importation schemes through Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, where baggage handlers, food-services employee and even a customs agent were alleged to be on the gang payroll.

Another major revenue source for the organization, according to the affidavits, was an online sports bookmaking outlet, with computers servers first based in Belize then in the Mohawk community of Kahnawake, south of Montreal.

Between October 2004 and mid-March 2006, the gambling operation raked in $26.9 million for the gang, the police said.

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