Again, I'm not saying I automatically believe this happened..
( My best Johhny Sack voice... " What's this,... The Fuckin UN NOW!!!!!")

But I do see it as at least plausible, definitely intriguing....

For one, a lot of these groups have already done business before, going back a long time, and I'm not talking even Europe.

Rothstien, Luciano and Lansky go back to the early to mid twenties with the Chinese and heroin. Throw in Englishmen and Scottish distillers, ( some from Canada too) French Corsicans, Turkish morphine suppliers, and multiethnic liquor distributors, and you got an early blueprint for a polygot syndicate.

Think of the Gas tax shit with the Russians. The Naples gangs are very tied into the Chinese. We see the interactions between Italy and South America.


The only thing that's admittedly seems weird is the Yakuza. But truthfully, I have no idea how they interact with the greater criminal landscape of Europe.


The Gambinos meeting over there seems plausible to me, if they needed to reestablish the narcotics routes. The only thing I would ask is, WHO WOULD THAT HAVE BEEN REPRESENTING THEM AT A MEETING? That's the question that reveals it as true or bullshit to me. But to dismiss it outright?

That's shortsighted to me......

In that book, it has Sicily trying to set up a cocaine monopoly in 1987. And they had the infrastructure for it, because of their heroin routes. Like I said Riina gets arrested in like 92-93. SOMEONE WOULD HAVE HAD TO FILL THAT VOID. ( And reading a lot, we see that it was Naples bosses, Calabrian mobsters..) Why not the players that ran it before Riina took over everything?
That to me is the reason they would be there.
Did Riina do business with the Families in NY like the Palermo clans did with the Pizza connection? I'd think not..... I don't recall the Corleonsesi having a distribution arm in NY, ( Maybe Catalano??) like the Cherry Hills were for Palermo.

I mean, all those billions went to SICILY!!!!! Most of it anyway, DID NOT STAY IN NY!!!! The Gambinos have been a mechanism by which the drug trade is facilitated between the Mafia of America and that of Europe. That Calabrian coke ain't all for US mob crews. It's for Europe. Like a lot of coke probably DOES go to Cosa Nostra, just through Calabrian hands first.



I could see the Gambinos being there as a continuation of that same cocaine initiative, as well to reestablish the position that was lost to the Corleonesi.

Same reason a few years later you got Sicilian bosses coming OVER HERE TO MEET WITH CALI. To get those routes back up, because they were INTREGAL TO THE SUCCESS OF SICILY.

I think Eurodave described them best, without drugs, and a city like NY, the Sicilian clans were kind of peasant like. They REALLY need drugs and NY. Same thing with the Calabrians, except they didn't have tunnel vision about NY, they spread out more, have Germany and Ontario and Australia for distribution. The Naples clans have internal distribution in Italy, they couldn't really fight them for it.

The rest of Europe is split I suspect, and maybe with one of these trans-crime meetings..