Pubdate: Fri, 18 Aug 2006 Source: Toronto Star (CN ON) Copyright: 2006 The Toronto Star Contact: http://www.thestar.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456 Author: Sean Gordon, Quebec Bureau Chief Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Rizzuto (Vito Rizzuto) REPUTED MONTREAL MOB BOSS SENT TO FACE U.S. CHARGES Ruling Ended 2-Year Battle Against Deportation Rizzuto Called Godfather Of Canadian Mafia MONTREAL--Reputed mob boss Vito Rizzuto, frequently described as the godfather of the Canadian mafia, has been extradited to face conspiracy charges in the murder of three New York gangsters after the Supreme Court of Canada turned down his last-ditch appeal to remain in the country. A panel of three justices refused to hear Rizzuto's appeal of a 2005 federal extradition order, ending a two-year legal fight. The justices provided no explanation for their decision, as is the custom. The top court issued its ruling yesterday morning and by lunchtime Rizzuto, 60, had been handed over to the FBI and was on his way to New York City, where he will be formally arraigned for his alleged part in plotting the 1981 murders of three gangland figures. "Vito Rizzuto is the most charismatic alleged mafia boss that Canada has ever seen," said Antonio Nicaso, a Toronto security consultant who has authored several books on organized crime and is now at work on a biography of Rizzuto. "This is the first time he will face justice for any serious crime," Nicaso added. Known for his immaculately tailored suits and his golf game, the suave, multilingual Rizzuto has never been successfully prosecuted for anything more major than conspiracy to commit arson -- a 1972 conviction that netted a two-year jail term. Despite his relative anonymity, law enforcement officials contend Rizzuto oversaw a vast criminal empire that imported and distributed tonnes of illicit drugs in Canada, laundered hundreds of millions of dollars, lent out millions more through loansharking operations and profited handsomely from illegal gambling, fraud and contract killings. In the early 1990s, Rizzuto was arrested and charged with smuggling 16 tonnes of hashish into Canada, but a judge threw the case out after ruling police investigators used illegal wiretaps during the investigation. In the U.S., a grand jury indicted Rizzuto in early 2004 under federal racketeering statutes that provide stiff penalties for gang-related activities. The Sicilian-born Rizzuto faces 20 years in prison if convicted. Former RCMP organized crime analyst Pierre de Champlain said the end of Rizzuto's legal battle against extradition is laden with symbolism, given he is the first presumed head of a Canadian mafia clan to face the U.S. courts. "This is a turning point in the history of Montreal's Sicilian clan," said de Champlain, who has written extensively on organized crime. "Having said that, the game is far from over. He must now be tried, and that's not a foregone conclusion, even if he has a steep hill to climb because two informers will testify against him." The only way Rizzuto will be able to return to Canada, legal experts say, is if he wins acquittal or makes an application to serve his sentence here. But even if Rizzuto manages to thwart the prosecution's efforts in New York, he will still have to face charges in connection with an $8.5 billion money-laundering scheme in Italy. Prosecutors in that country have named Rizzuto as one of the central figures in the affair, which centred on a project to build a bridge linking Sicily with the Italian province of Calabria. Of more immediate concern for Rizzuto -- who has spent lavishly in his defence, retaining a team of a half-dozen lawyers -- are the charges he will shortly face in a Brooklyn courtroom. It's alleged Rizzuto was one of four gunmen hired by former Bonnano crime family captain Joseph Massino to kill three other Bonnano captains who were planning a power grab in 1981 after the incarceration of then-boss Phil Rastelli. The three were lured to a Brooklyn social club, where they were shot to death. According to testimony in a New York court, Rizzuto hid in a closet and was the first to open fire after bursting out. Children later discovered the remains of Alphonse "Sonny Red" Indelicato while playing in a vacant lot in the hardscrabble borough of Queens. The bodies of the other two men, Dominick "Big Trin" Trinchera and Philip "Philly Lucky" Giaccone, were exhumed from the same lot several years later. The Rizzuto clan, who investigators say has held sway over Montreal's mafia since the early 1980s, emigrated to Canada in 1954 from the small Sicilian farming hamlet of Cattolica Eraclea. Family patriarch Nick Rizzuto -- an octogenarian who mafia experts suggest resumed control of the Rizzuto organization when his son was arrested -- was reputedly an associate of the Cotroni gang, which controlled much of Montreal's drug trade in the 1970s. By the 1980s, the Rizzutos had emerged as the city's pre-eminent mafia clan after a series of gangland killings and the murder of Paolo Violi, a Cotroni lieutenant, and all of Violi's brothers. Nicaso said Rizzuto's deft handling of the Montreal mafia's various criminal enterprises made him the first homegrown alleged mob boss to expand beyond Quebec into Ontario -- Vito Rizzuto was once involved with a waste management company in suburban Toronto -- and other parts of Canada. "He was able to extend the influence of his family well beyond Montreal and into Europe, primarily with Italian groups, and into the United States, primarily with New York crime families like the Bonnanos," he said. Testimony from mafia turncoats suggest Rizzuto took over control of the family from his father in the 1990s, and de Champlain said he was considered the Bonnano representative in Canada. The Bonnanos, one of the fabled "big five" New York crime families, are described in U.S. court documents as "the only La Cosa Nostra family with a significant presence in Canada," and Rizzuto was considered its "most influential" figure. The disintegration of the Bonnano empire in 2003 prompted the series of arrests that netted Rizzuto and 29 others, and came about chiefly because prosecutors were able to secure the co-operation of Massino and other senior members of the family. Massino, who is serving a life sentence for murder, will testify against Rizzuto, as will his brother-in-law Salvatore "Good-looking Sal" Vitale, another long-time mob soldier who says he was among the four men hired to carry out the purge. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom