One of the worst articles I've read yet about the background to the situation in Montreal. The thrust of the article -- Rizzuto is planning to move closer to his
supposed rivals, i.e., the Siderno Group ('ndrangheta) -- doesn't make any sense. Nor do some of the other paragraphs in this article, which contradict the tired notion of Calabrian and Sicilian mafiosi always fighting like cats and dogs.
Link:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1260835--is-montreal-mobster-vito-rizzuto-coming-to-townExcerpts:
Is Montreal mobster Vito Rizzuto coming to town?Julian Sher, Peter Edwards and Robert Cribb
Toronto Star Staff Reporters
Published on Saturday September 22, 2012
[snip]
Now, veteran organized crime investigators are raising intriguing possibilities: Vito Rizzuto, 66, is considering the GTA as his new home base, where he may choose between revenge and rebuilding his shaken empire.
“Toronto is where he can find strength and calm,” one senior Quebec police official told a team from the
Star and the Radio-Canada program
Enquête that is investigating the underworld.
For some time now, Rizzuto’s $1.5-million home in a northeast Montreal suburb — described in real-estate listings as a “luxurious property” with five bedrooms and a marble foyer — has been up for sale on an upscale street nicknamed “Mafia Row.”
Montreal police have told their Toronto colleagues that, according their Mob sources, Rizzuto might be contemplating a move to Ontario — right in the heartland of some of his rivals.
“Wow, that’s gutsy,” was the reaction of one veteran Mafia investigator in the province. “But he’s is no stranger to Ontario.”
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Rizzuto felt comfortable in the Toronto area, where his businesses included investment in a restaurant and nightclub, Bay Street stock trading and garbage disposal.
[snip]
In the complicated crime chessboard that is the Canadian Mafia, Rizzuto had always been shrewd enough to build alliances with the GTA-based underworld.
The close ties between the Sicilian and Calabrian mob families were in evidence at a 50th wedding anniversary in Vaughan in February 2011 attended by so many figures of “traditional organized crime” — the polite police term for the Mafia — that the Toronto Police conducted extensive video surveillance.
The surveillance report on the event concluded that, “the mix of both Sicilian and Calabrian guests at this event would appear to show there is no animosity between the two groups in the GTA.”
“It would be more plausible to believe the two factions are working together in the GTA to possibly share control of Montreal,” the report said.
