COPS TOPPLE MAFIA'S BIGGEST DRUG SMUGGLERS
tu...@tande.com
in central Texas. They were bound for Sault Ste. Marie and nothing was
supposed to go wrong on May 16 for the two accused drug couriers allegedly
carrying 200 kilos of cocaine, worth about $6 million, in the passenger seat
of their Ford F-150 pickup.
The planning had been intensive. The pay was good at $50,000 a
trip.
And an escort vehicle was supposed to be tripping all the radar
traps that
lay ahead of them while they travelled the speed limit on state
Hwy. 59.
But two Texas Department of Public Safety officers were fast approaching
in their cruiser from behind -- and in a matter of minutes, things did go
very wrong for the Canadians.
The cocaine was found. John Hill, 29, and Ri chard Court, 31, were
arrested and indicted with possession with intent to distribute and are
facing jail time of 10 years-to-life.
And in a matter of months, what police allege was a billion-dollar crime
empire 30 years in the making came crashing down around them, together with
the Woodbridge, Ont.-based family that ran it.
Alfonso Caruana arrived in Montreal in '68. The uneducated laborer
immigrated from Sicily and his family came into quick conflict with
Montreal's ruling mob boss, Paolo Violi.
Violi, who apparently opposed drug
trafficking, ordered in 1972 the murder of a
Caruana-Cuntrera ally, but the marked man
fled to Venezuela. The dispute between the
two gangs continued until '78, when Violi was
killed by three men, including Agostino
Cuntrera. Two other Violi brothers,
Francesco and Rocco, were also murdered.
Police said that by 1980, the
Caruana-Cuntrera clan grew to control a
major share of the world's heroin trade,
fronted by a Montreal produce company.
RCMP estimated in the decade after the
murders about 800 kilos of heroin and 68
tonnes of hashish were sent through Montreal
by the Sicilian crime family.
Family expands
Dealing in up to 50 kilos a month, the family spread out to
England,
Switzerland, Venezuela, Italy, Brazil and Pakistan, and used a
network of
family-owned furniture companies, financial houses and shipping
firms to
facilitate their business.
The Caruana-Cuntrera clan, alleged to have supplied Sicilian mob
families
in the U.S., was virtually left alone after the FBI shut down the
heroin
distribution network set up in U.S. pizza parlors.
Authorities estimate the Caruana-Cuntrera group laundered more
than $36
million through Montreal banks between 1980 and '86.
In court testimony, members of the group made such large deposits they had
to use hockey bags to carry the cash.
The group, based in Montreal and Caracas, is considered by Italian
authorities to be the world's most powerful Sicilian mafia drug-trafficking
group. Italian police shut down the group's heroin refineries in Sicily in
the 1980s and the clan moved its refinery operations to Thailand.
Authorities in Britain wanted to question him about a 1985 seizure of 250
kilos of heroin being shipped in furniture. The clan had been operating in
Britain for about a decade before Scotland Yard and British customs noticed
it.
Project Omerta -- mafia slang for silence -- began a decade later, long
before Hill and Court were arrested in Texas.
Although the seizure would normally be considered the cost of
doing
business, three seemingly isolated events -- Pasquale Cuntrera's
arrest in
Spain, an FBI tail during a Florida shipment and the takedown
outside
Houston -- suddenly felt like more than bad luck.
A deal in Miami had been aborted earlier in April when the
importers
made an FBI surveillance tail and beat it to Canada.
That was followed a few weeks later on a May weekend in Houston
where a Caruana-Cuntrera courier was to pick up the cocaine and
drive it
back to Canada.
Police say the transaction, to take place in a Houston warehouse, was
aborted in favor of a handoff at a gas station outside the city. Two pickups
were parked end-to-end behind a dumpster to exchange the cargo, but without
any false compartments the Caruana driver had to rip out the truck's rear
seat to place the garbage bags filled with cocaine.
Because a false compartment being made for the truck wasn't ready in time
for the shipment, the Texas state troopers easily found the stash. Police
also knew the group was preparing its next two shipments bound for Canada in
June.
Police intelligence became so exact in Ormerta, launched with
information
gathered by Toronto Police, that drug shipments were being picked
off
regularly and the group began making what police described as
stupid and
desperate errors.
"We were picking off everything they were doing," a police source said.
"There would have been more (seizures), but when they saw something, they'd
change their ways."
Game was up
As recently as this week, police sources said wiretaps revealed
the targets
knew the game was up and were preparing to leave Toronto, if not
the
country.
Investigators, however, say the
100-odd wiretaps running at the
height of the investigation launched in
June 1996 by the Special
Enforcement Unit -- made up of
RCMP, OPP Toronto, York and
Peel police officers -- yielded little
more than small talk.
"All that work and we'd hear
conversations like, 'Hey. How's it
going? Good? Okay. See `ya,' " one
officer said.
But one of those wiretaps provided the location of mob boss
Pasquale
Cuntrera, information Italians were grateful to receive.
The 63-year-old man fled Italy earlier this year just days before an
appeals court upheld his conviction and 21-year sentence for drug
trafficking.
He had been freed pending the verdict -- and took the opportunity to flee
the country, putting Italian law enforcement through "moments of great
bitterness," according to Italian Interior Minister Giorgio Napolitano.
The RCMP learned that while hiding out in Malaga, Spain, Cuntrera was
trying to arrange new passports and airline tickets to Venezuela through
cross-Atlantic phone calls to the Caruana clan in Canada.
Cuntrera was arrested May 24 and extradited to Italy to begin his
sentence.
Meanwhile, Mexican authorities set their sights on another key player in
the Caruana-Cuntrera crime family: Oreste Pagano, a Neapolitan camorista,
who was sentenced to 18 years in absentia after fleeing Italy for Cancun to
become one of the world's most-wanted drug barons. According to Caribinieri
Capt. Andrea Carpani, Pagano allegedly was the middleman between South
America and the Caruana-Cuntrera family.
The Italians wanted him badly -- and the Mexicans, eager to oblige, formed
an elite 60-member task force vetted by both the FBI and the DEA to work in
conjunction with the RCMP to make it happen.
He was arrested yesterday, on his birthday, but he's being shipped to
Canada to face drug conspiracy charges, and Italians will begin extradition
proceedings after trial here.
Carpani lifted his eyebrows, tilted his head slightly and then
gently shook it
in the affirmative: The country would like Alfonso Caruana in one
of its jails.
Caruana has been sentenced in absentia to 21 years in jail for
drug-trafficking and mafia association. There are also other
trafficking cases
being adjudicated in Italy.
But he said Italy will ask for his extradition once Canadian
courts have
dealt with him.
And, added Joe Genovese, FBI liaison at the U.S. embassy in
Ottawa, the
Americans are deciding whether to extradite him.
Carpani muted his joy of the arrests of the Caruana family wing
during a
press conference yesterday. The crime family, he explained, is
capable of
moving tonnes of cocaine into his country, and for so long, it
appeared
authorities were helpless in stopping it.
The Caruana-Cuntrera family is so wealthy it appears "they own
half of
Venezuela," a police source said.
After arriving from Montreal in the spring of 1995, Woodbridge became one
of the world's major drug-trafficking centres, where decisions made spanned
the globe.
"Yeah, it did too," a police source said.
"This guy is the big guy," the source said. "These guys were
moving a lot of
shit here ... Nobody believed we could have pulled it off."
Another officer described this Sicilian mafia clan as "The A-Team" among
mafia families.
"He is smart," the police source said of
Alfonso Caruana, describing him as a "smooth
businessman."
"He knows what he's doing. They're no
dummies, let me tell you. I have to give him
credit."
The source said police suspect the group
shipped about $2 million cash by couriers into
the U.S. every two weeks. In return, loads of
cocaine stuffed in vehicles would be shipped
up to Canada. Police said each cocaine
shipment by vehicle was about 200 kilos, and
suspect five or six moderate-sized shipments
slipped through since Omerta took off in
February 1997.
Dealt in cash
"I never seen him go into a bank," the source said, indicating
all, if not
most, of the group's business was done in cash.
That may be because of a lesson learned when the family's centre
of
operations was in Montreal.
Alfonso Caruana was taken to task by Revenue Canada last year in Montreal.
The taxman wanted $29.8 million in unpaid taxes and penalties. But he
claimed he just washed cars in an auto shop for a living, is bankrupt and
earns only $400 a week.
Alfonso Caruana also couldn't explain why $21 million went through his
bank account in 1981, telling court he allowed people to deposit money into
his account. Authorities looked into his bank account after his brother
Gerlando was jailed for 20 years in 1985 for smuggling 58 kilos of heroin in
Montreal.
But he had sold two buildings, a house and a plot of land before he moved
to Venezuela where he told court he worked as a pig farmer near the
Colombian border, just before he was given the tax bill in 1985.
During trial, the judge didn't believe Alfonso Caruana's claim he had only
$250 in assets and ordered him to pay $90,000 of the outstanding tax bill.
In a confidential FBI report obtained by The Toronto Sun, the
Caruana-Cuntrera organization is said to be the only Sicilian mafia family
based outside the island with the approval of the ruling mafia commission in
Palermo.
The gang's branch offices are spread around the world and,
according to
the report, "it appears able to oversee its global enterprise ...
with little
interference."
The report stated the low profile and success of the group allowed it to
move into legitimate businesses, where recent police inventories of the clan
indicate it has more than 50 companies in Venezuela, including casinos,
merchant ships, hotels, agricultural industries, travel agencies, real
estate, oil and gas companies, meat packers, tourism and cattle ranches
complete with airstrips for drug planes.
The clan set itself up in Caracas when mafia boss Pasquale Caruana fled
Sicily in 1963 and within two years received approval from the ruling
commission to make the Venezuelan city its new base of operations.
As the Caruana-Cuntrera family grew wealthier, it diversified into cocaine,
"expanded its sources and markets, and grew more sophisticated in
laundering its profits," the FBI report stated.
It also said the Drug Enforcement Administration estimates 41/2 to 6
tonnes of cocaine are shipped through Venezuela per month, evenly split for
U.S. and European markets.
The family "is believed to control a significant portion of this
trade," the
report said.
"The Caruana and Cuntrera
brothers travelled extensively
in Europe, as well as
between Montreal and
Caracas, during the 1960s
as they laid the foundation
for an international drug
empire.
"Today, an assortment of specialized business fronts in each
country
facilitates smuggling drugs and laundering money," the FBI report
said.
Authorities in other countries have been helping Canadian police in
tracking $34 million US the family has shipped, according to a confidential
Canadian police report. Some of that money helped the family build estates
in England, Switzerland, Venezuela and Brazil. The report added the Caruanas
were the principal heroin suppliers for members of the Bonanno and Gambino
families, both of New York.
The FBI report said that after depositing the money, it was withdrawn as
U.S. bank drafts and sent to Switzerland. From there, the money was
distributed to accounts in Thailand, England, Aruba, Venezuela and Houston.
The laundering became more sophisticated, and a key to its success is the
lack of exchange controls in Venezuela, where U.S. cash is converted into
local currency and deposited.
The money is then used to underwrite ghost or legitimate
companies, said
the report, or reconverted into foreign currency.
But, as RCMP Insp. Ben Soave said yesterday, the drug supply in Canada may
not be affected because most went to Europe and the U.S. "I think in the big
global sense, this will have an impact on the drug trade," he said. "It will
slow down, prices may go up, but I don't think it will have a major,
significant impact when you look at the broader picture."
But organized crime hits us where we live -- and they live among
us.
"I think if we want to make it visible, put an ugly face on it, I think we
can take a perfect example of the next time somebody is selling drugs in a
schoolyard to very young children," Soave said.
"It all started from (these) organized criminals that were living without
any suspicion in your community.
"The schoolyard and the children. I think this (symbolizes) the
likely
process of organized crime and the success they're having."
--
michael J corleone
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