US-Italian Mafia raid nets top bosses

US-Italian Mafia raid nets top bosses

By Guy Dinmore in Rome and Daniel Pimlott in New York

Published: February 7 2008 14:52 | Last updated: February 8 2008 01:21

US and Italian police arrested at least 100 Mafia suspects in New York and Sicily on Thursday, decapitating the second largest crime family in the US and thwarting plans by a new generation of organised crime bosses to re-establish a transatlantic axis.

Police described Operation Old Bridge, the culmination of investigations that began five years ago, as the biggest combined effort since the “Pizza Connection” sweep of Mafia drug traffickers in the mid-1980s.

Francesco Messineo, prosecutor in Palermo, regional capital of Sicily, called it the “most ambitious of all joint operations”, which had broken a dangerous connection between the two poles of the Sicilian Mafia.

“Organised crime still exists in the city and the state of New York,” remarked Andrew Cuomo, New York attorney-general. “We like to think that it’s a vestige of the past. It’s not.”

The arrests, officials said, dealt another serious blow to Cosa Nostra in Sicily, where the capture of Bernardo Provenzano in April 2006 and Salvatore Lo Piccolo last November had created a power vacuum that families exiled to the US in the ­internal “second Mafia war” of the 1980s were trying to fill.

By Thursday night, when operations were still going on, police in New York and its suburbs had arrested 81 members and associates of the Gambino family, while 23 Mafia suspects from ­several families had been held in and around Palermo.

More than 80 people were indicted in New York on Thursday, of whom 25 were members of the Gambino family, for a range of crimes including seven murders, securities fraud and extortion connected to the building of a Nascar racetrack on Staten Island.

Of those indicted, 26 were charged with crimes relating to illegal gambling and the operation of at least four gambling websites out of Costa Rica.

This is the latest connection to emerge between the online gambling industry and organised crime. The cash generated by illegal online gambling was “the fuel for organised crime”, said Richard Brown, the Queens district attorney.

Some of the crimes dated back to the 1970s and included the murder in the early 1980s of two members of the Inzerillo mob.

David Shafer, a senior FBI official, told reporters in Rome that the three top commanders of the Gambino family in Brooklyn had been arrested. He ranked the Gambinos as the second most powerful organised crime family in the US behind the Genovese.

The acting boss of the Gambino family was alleged to be John “Jackie the Nose” D’Amico. His deputy was named as Frank Cali.

Raffaele Grassi, a top organised crime official in the Italian national police, said that Mr Cali was the key link between the Gambino family and Sicily. Speaking after a press conference in New York, he said: “In the last few years a lot of members of [the Sicilian Mafia] came to New York to meet Frank Cali.” He added that the Gambino family and the Inzerillo family were related.

Members of the Inzerillo clan fled to the US in the 1980s, hunted by the ­Corleone clan led by Toto Riini, who was arrested in 1993 and succeeded by Mr Provenzano, whose arrest ended the clan’s dominance.

Mr Messineo said Sicily’s Cosa Nostra wanted to get back into the transatlantic drugs trade, as cocaine was “much more profitable than extortion”.

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'Mafiosi' held in US and Sicily

Brunettini Giuseppe, Sergio Corallo, Antonino Chiappara, Filippo Casamento, Giovanni Simone, Nicola Di Salvo, Melchiorre Guglielmini, Tommaso Lo Presti, Gaetano Savoca, Vincenzo Savoca, Giovanni Lo Ve Dozens of people have been detained by US and Italian authorities targeting an alleged Mafia-run transatlantic drug trafficking operation.

The operation, codenamed "Old Bridge," saw arrests in and around New York and the Sicilian capital, Palermo.

More than 50 members of the notorious Gambino family were held by FBI agents in New York City and its northern suburbs, New Jersey and Long Island.

Police in Palermo said they hoped to bring in 25 to 30 suspects.

'Franky Boy'

The FBI is said to have tracked suspects day and night, eavesdropping with sophisticated surveillance equipment. New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo

One of those arrested in the raids in the US was Francesco Paolo Augusto Cali, of the New York Gambino family, known as "Franky Boy".

He is allegedly the "ambassador" in the US of the Sicilian Mafia, the Cosa Nostra, tasked with improving relations between the various families.

At a news conference in New York, state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said organised crime was still a problem.

"We like to think it's a vestige of the past," he added. "It's not. It is as unrelenting as weeds that continue to sprout in the cracks in society."

'Boss of bosses' link

The list of charges against associates of the Gambino family include allegations of extortion in the construction industry, loansharking and embezzlement from trades unions.

Several hundred police took part in the Italian side of the operation, mainly in Sicily.

Senior anti-Mafia prosecutor Francesco Messineo told reporters in Rome: "There was an attempt to rekindle ties between Cosa Nostra in Palermo and New York because the Sicilian Mafia wanted to get back into drug trafficking in a big way."

The Italian arrests included suspects connected with "boss of bosses" Salvatore Lo Piccolo, who was seized by the authorities in November.

He took over after the arrest in 2006 of Bernardo Provenzano who had spent decades in hiding.