The Sixth Family (51 page)
Authors: Lee Lamothe
“[Lino] remembers meeting with a group of Canadian Bonanno members at a catering hall,” says an FBI report prepared in December 2003 when FBI Special Agents Christine Grubert and Jay Kramer secretly debriefed Lino after he agreed to cooperate with the government. “At this meeting, the Canadian Bonannos were informed of Massino’s new position as boss of the Bonanno Family,” the report says.
The date of the visit to Montreal was a little fuzzy for Lino: “While we were there I saw Joe LoPresti. I didn’t pay attention what year it was, it was ’91, ’88, ’89. It’s no big deal to me.”
Lino insisted LoPresti was at the meetings in Montreal. Lino would have remembered him since he was one of the few Montrealers Lino knew. LoPresti had been in Lino’s bar in New York many times and Lino recognized him easily when photographs of LoPresti were later shown to him. If the Bonanno entourage came with news that Massino had been made the new boss, and LoPresti was there at the time, it means the excursion to Montreal took place after Rastelli’s death, on June 24, 1991, but before LoPresti’s murder, on April 30, 1992.
This, in turn, means that—if Lino is to be believed—the visit likely occurred during the four-game series between the Mets and the Expos, from July 1 to 4, 1991. (There was only one other Expos-Mets series in Montreal between the time of Rastelli’s and LoPresti’s deaths, an April 17 to 19, 1992 match-up in which the Mets took two of the three games. This would have been almost a year after Rastelli’s death but only 11 days before LoPresti’s murder. This alternative date is tantalizing, since it is so close to LoPresti’s death that it leads to speculation that the Montrealer committed some indiscretion during the meetings, or that the New Yorkers brought news or a complaint against him that needed addressing. It is, however, likely too long after Rastelli’s death. It did not take a year for Massino to install himself in the job and he likely did not wait long afterwards to reach out to Canada.)
The Sixth Family’s party in a Montreal catering and banquet hall was quite an affair, with the closest of the Rizzutos’ friends and family invited. It was a dinner for “made members” only, Lino told the FBI in one of his debriefing sessions, meaning that outsiders and associates were not a part of the festivities. Lino also spoke of the Montreal visits, with less precision, under oath in a Brooklyn courtroom.
“We met with George [Sciascia], Joe LoPresti, Vito Rizzuto. We had a dinner with about 30, 40 people,” Lino said in court. LoPresti and Sciascia would have been busy during the dinner; as the only two who knew everyone from both cities, they would be preoccupied with introducing the diners to one another. Introductions are important to mobsters. They are carefully constructed and carefully observed. As a secret society, it takes three mobsters for any two of them to officially meet, according to Mafia tradition. A member cannot reveal his membership to anyone outside the fraternity, so he cannot announce to a stranger, even one he is pretty certain has also been made, that he is an inducted member. Only a third made man can formally introduce two other made members to each other; the third person must confirm to each that the other has also been inducted into the Mafia.
“When you say somebody is
amico nostra
[“a friend of ours”], you know he’s a made man. If you just say he’s a friend, he’s just a friend,” Lino explained. In accordance with that policy, it would have fallen upon Sciascia and LoPresti to do most of the introductions at the dinner party. They would have been among the few people in the room who could confirm that both people being introduced, from both cities, were, in fact, Mafia members.
amico nostra
[“a friend of ours”], you know he’s a made man. If you just say he’s a friend, he’s just a friend,” Lino explained. In accordance with that policy, it would have fallen upon Sciascia and LoPresti to do most of the introductions at the dinner party. They would have been among the few people in the room who could confirm that both people being introduced, from both cities, were, in fact, Mafia members.
Lino told the FBI that he was formally introduced to a Montrealer who bore a special distinction, one worth bragging about. LoPresti said the man Lino was meeting was both a Bonanno soldier and a politician, according to the FBI documents. Lino said the man was Alfonso Gagliano, an allegation the veteran former Canadian politician vehemently denies.
“[Lino] was shown a picture of Alfonso Gagliano,” says an FBI debriefing report. To protect their identities, informants’ names are not used in these reports, and the word “Individual” replaces the informant’s name. It is clear from the notes, however, that it was Lino making the statements, a point confirmed later in court. “[Lino] stated that he recognized Gagliano from his trip to Montreal, Canada, in the early 1990s. [Lino] advised that Gagliano was introduced to him as a soldier in the Bonanno Family by Joe LoPresti, another Bonanno member in Canada. At a dinner, LoPresti bragged to the individual that the Montreal Bonannos had such extensive connections, including that of Gagliano, a politician,” the report says. Lino also “socialized with Gagliano when he was hanging out with Vito Rizzutto [
sic
].” The statement is shocking. Alfonso Gagliano played an important and prominent part in Canada’s political life for two decades. He was first elected to Parliament to represent the people of Montreal’s Saint-Léonard neighborhood in 1984 and held the riding through four straight elections, a tenure during which he became a powerful politician. He was in charge of the important Liberal Party caucus for the province of Quebec and was named to Cabinet in 1996, and to the post of Minister of Public Works in 1997. He later said his move into the federal Cabinet was delayed because of an RCMP investigation into his past associations. After leaving politics, he was named Canada’s ambassador to Denmark, but was recalled in 2004 amid the scandal of a damning report by the country’s Auditor-General documenting inappropriate government expenditures in a $332-million sponsorship program that Gagliano oversaw for a time. A monumental inquiry headed by Judge John Gomery found that the program amounted to “an elaborate kickback scheme,” that funneled money to the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party of Canada and to Liberal-friendly advertising executives. Judge Gomery’s report said that $147 million in public money went directly from the sponsorship program to the agencies as commissions and fees.
sic
].” The statement is shocking. Alfonso Gagliano played an important and prominent part in Canada’s political life for two decades. He was first elected to Parliament to represent the people of Montreal’s Saint-Léonard neighborhood in 1984 and held the riding through four straight elections, a tenure during which he became a powerful politician. He was in charge of the important Liberal Party caucus for the province of Quebec and was named to Cabinet in 1996, and to the post of Minister of Public Works in 1997. He later said his move into the federal Cabinet was delayed because of an RCMP investigation into his past associations. After leaving politics, he was named Canada’s ambassador to Denmark, but was recalled in 2004 amid the scandal of a damning report by the country’s Auditor-General documenting inappropriate government expenditures in a $332-million sponsorship program that Gagliano oversaw for a time. A monumental inquiry headed by Judge John Gomery found that the program amounted to “an elaborate kickback scheme,” that funneled money to the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party of Canada and to Liberal-friendly advertising executives. Judge Gomery’s report said that $147 million in public money went directly from the sponsorship program to the agencies as commissions and fees.
Lino’s allegations about Gagliano, first reported in the New York
Daily News
, created a furor in Canada. On the day the allegations became public, it was raised in Parliament by Stephen Harper, then the leader of the Opposition and now the Prime Minister.
Daily News
, created a furor in Canada. On the day the allegations became public, it was raised in Parliament by Stephen Harper, then the leader of the Opposition and now the Prime Minister.
“The report claims that in the 1990s he was a ‘made’ member of the Brooklyn-based Bonanno crime family. My question is simple: Since Mr. Gagliano was in Cabinet and ambassador during this period, was the government aware of this information and when did it become aware of these allegations?” Harper asked. The then prime minister Paul Martin replied: “Let me simply say that these are very serious allegations and everyone should be very careful about accepting or repeating such allegations.” The Opposition was unsatisified with the response, and Peter MacKay, a senior Opposition member said: “It is a very serious matter. … Prior to his appointment as ambassador to Denmark, Mr. Gagliano filled a number of Liberal Cabinet positions until the year 2002. Again, my question for the government, for the prime minister, for the minister responsible, is what steps did the Privy Council Office and the Department of the Solicitor General take to ensure that proper security clearances were obtained prior to Mr. Gagliano being admitted to Cabinet?” This question was responded to by Anne McLellan, the deputy prime minister at the time: “I have no intention of commenting on these allegations. If the honorable member is asking about the operational activities of the RCMP, I suggest that the honorable member more appropriately direct his question to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” she said.
For his part, Gagliano has firmly denied Lino’s allegations explicitly and repeatedly.
“I was a very popular member of Parliament,” Gagliano told reporters, saying he might inadvertently have met some of the gangsters named by Lino in the course of glad-handing and politicking. “As a politician I might have—in social events, in public events, during an election campaign going door-to-door—I might have met some of those people. But really, it doesn’t mean that I know [them] personally.” He said he never attended a dinner with mafiosi and was never involved in criminal behavior.
“I’m not a member of a Mafia,” Gagliano said. In the annals of things that politicians feel they have to say to defend themselves, this surely ranks above even the famous denial by Richard Nixon, the former U.S. president: “I am not a crook.”
It was not the first time Gagliano had had to brush aside allegations of questionable ties to known
mafiosi
and organized crime figures. When it was revealed that he was the former bookkeeper for a business owned by Agostino Cuntrera, who helped to kill Paolo Violi in 1978, he said it was “an error in judgment.” Cuntrera and Gagliano shared another link. The Association de Siculiana, a cultural group in Montreal founded and presided over by Gagliano, was later run by Cuntrera, who was named president a few years after Gagliano gave up the post. Another bookkeeping client of Gagliano’s was Dino Messina, who was found during court proceedings over a stock fraud to be a financial representative of Vito Rizzuto’s. Another man with unsavory links, Filippo Vaccarello, a drug trafficker linked to the Sixth Family, was under surveillance when officers watched him walk into Gagliano’s bookkeeping office a year after he was first elected into federal office. Gagliano told police he did not know Messina or Vaccarello. And in 2001, Gaetano Amodeo, an accused Mafia assassin from Cattolica Eraclea who was wanted for murder and attempted murder in Italy and Germany, was arrested in Montreal, where he had been living for almost five years. Several Canadians had traveled back to Cattolica Eraclea for Amodeo’s 1986 wedding to Maria Sicurella. One of the crimes Italian courts blamed on Amodeo was the shooting of a Carabinieri officer who was probing the Mafia in Agrigento province. The Canadian public was outraged that the government knew Amodeo had been in Canada for two years before he was arrested; the RCMP had even sent Italian authorities a surveillance photo of Amodeo meeting with Nick Rizzuto. Indeed, Gagliano’s office had sent a letter to Canada’s immigration department seeking information on behalf of Maria Sicurella di Amodeo, Amodeo’s wife, who was applying to become a landed immigrant. She later sponsored her husband for entry to Canada. Before he was sent back to face justice in Italy, Amodeo made a statement that would later be echoed by Gagliano: “I was never part of the Mafia.”
mafiosi
and organized crime figures. When it was revealed that he was the former bookkeeper for a business owned by Agostino Cuntrera, who helped to kill Paolo Violi in 1978, he said it was “an error in judgment.” Cuntrera and Gagliano shared another link. The Association de Siculiana, a cultural group in Montreal founded and presided over by Gagliano, was later run by Cuntrera, who was named president a few years after Gagliano gave up the post. Another bookkeeping client of Gagliano’s was Dino Messina, who was found during court proceedings over a stock fraud to be a financial representative of Vito Rizzuto’s. Another man with unsavory links, Filippo Vaccarello, a drug trafficker linked to the Sixth Family, was under surveillance when officers watched him walk into Gagliano’s bookkeeping office a year after he was first elected into federal office. Gagliano told police he did not know Messina or Vaccarello. And in 2001, Gaetano Amodeo, an accused Mafia assassin from Cattolica Eraclea who was wanted for murder and attempted murder in Italy and Germany, was arrested in Montreal, where he had been living for almost five years. Several Canadians had traveled back to Cattolica Eraclea for Amodeo’s 1986 wedding to Maria Sicurella. One of the crimes Italian courts blamed on Amodeo was the shooting of a Carabinieri officer who was probing the Mafia in Agrigento province. The Canadian public was outraged that the government knew Amodeo had been in Canada for two years before he was arrested; the RCMP had even sent Italian authorities a surveillance photo of Amodeo meeting with Nick Rizzuto. Indeed, Gagliano’s office had sent a letter to Canada’s immigration department seeking information on behalf of Maria Sicurella di Amodeo, Amodeo’s wife, who was applying to become a landed immigrant. She later sponsored her husband for entry to Canada. Before he was sent back to face justice in Italy, Amodeo made a statement that would later be echoed by Gagliano: “I was never part of the Mafia.”
Another mobster has also secretly suggested to police that the Montreal Mafia had direct access to a friend in the Canadian government. These statements, never before revealed, add to the allegations of the Montreal Mafia’s political ties.
Drug trafficker Oreste Pagano agreed to cooperate with authorities after he was charged alongside Alfonso Caruana for conspiracy to import drugs. During one of Pagano’s secret debriefing sessions, he spoke of the value to the mob of having contacts in the government. In Italy, he said, the Mafia was well entrenched in political circles.
“You have to realize that the Mafia in Italy, let’s say, in the last 40 years, were much supported by the politicians. By important politicians,” he said. The cooperation in granting huge government public works contracts was immensely profitable for both sides, the only illicit scheme that could compete with drug trafficking in terms of its financial return.
“The most important investments where they can profit are the government investments. So then there was a strong connection between the Mafia and the government. For every investment of, for example, $100 million, the profit on $100 million was $30 million in profit. Fifteen million dollars would go to the Mafia and $15 million would go to the government,” Pagano said.
He was then asked by an officer with the RCMP’s Integrated Proceeds of Crime Unit in Toronto if the Mafia had a similar relationship with the government in Canada. Pagano was not as sure.
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