Published on Wednesday September 19, 2012 TORONTO STAR
ROBERT CRIBB, PETER EDWARDS, ROB FERGUSON and JULIAN SHER

A little-known Mafia organization called the ’Ndrangheta has risen to a “Tier 1” national threat, says the RCMP’s top Mafia-hunter in Ontario.

The risk assessment of the increasingly powerful group , whose Canadian power base is in the GTA, is based on criteria that includes, “corruption, scope, violence, infiltration, sophistication, expertise, subversion, strategy, discipline, insulation, multiple enterprises, group cohesiveness, (and) monopoly,” Supt. Kevin Harrison said in an exclusive interview with the Toronto Star and Radio-Canada.

“Part of the reason that they are (so powerful) is because of the influence that they have economically,” Harrison said. “And that’s not something that hits you in the face like a body bleeding on the sidewalk like you have in Montreal. They are very savvy, they run under the radar in terms of public notoriety but yet they are so pervasive in the economy.

Harrison’s comments come as the Charbonneau Inquiry in Montreal probes links between organized crime, politicians and the construction industry.

He noted that in Italy the ’Ndrangheta is considered more powerful than the better-known Sicilian Mafia.

“Certainly in Italy they are the pinnacle,” Harrison said. “That translates to their rise and significance here in Canada.”

Ben Soave, who retired in 2004 as chief superintendent in charge of the RCMP’s organized crime unit in Ontario, told the Star and Radio-Canada that while Mafia groups in the GTA have a “much lower profile . . . they’re probably more active than in Quebec.”

“They can operate as effectively and be as damaging as what they’re doing in Montreal,’ he said.

While he offered no specific example of political corruption, Soave said he is certain Mafia groups have a wide swath of influence — “from political figures, to law enforcement, to people in the criminal justice system and the manufacturing industries.”

“Sometimes the politicians are very naive people,” Soave said. “They don’t look at the danger, the risk of . . . they shake hands, they take money . . . and then ask for forgiveness.

“This is one of the fundamental issues about organized crime. People do not want to admit that they have a problem. The people in Montreal feel it much more so than here, they understand it. It’s daily in the newspapers there. Here (in Ontario) we’re very naive. We’re very naive.”

At the International Plowing Match east of Kitchener, Premier Dalton McGuinty said he never received warnings from police or other authorities about organized crime infiltrating Ontario politics and doubts the accusations are true.

“If there are some serious and warranted allegations they need to be made in a substantive way, not through the media,” he told reporters.

“The first time I hear about this is through the media. And I would expect that people in positions of responsibility among our police services would be drawing this to our attention at the earliest possible opportunity.

“I have no reason to believe that they would want to keep this quiet and confidential if, in fact, this is grounded in reality. I would think they would have approached us in a constructive way some time ago.

“If there’s some truth to this, then let’s get it on the table. Provide us with the background to this.”

The RCMP estimates the ’Ndrangheta have seven “locali,” or cells, most of which are based in the GTA, Harrison said.

Harrison cautioned that he has seen no evidence of political corruption, unlike large-scale scandals that have rocked Italy.

“That doesn’t mean they don’t have influence in the municipalities because of the economic wealth they have in smaller areas,” Harrison said. “They are into lots of legitimate business.”

Harrison said he now has 50 officers, with 40 in the GTA and another 10 in the Golden Horseshoe, working Mafia activity full time.

The concerns expressed by Harrison and Soave were echoed by a top Italian prosecutor interviewed in the joint Toronto Star-Radio-Canada investigation.

“Canada is a virgin land for the ’Ndrangheta,” Roberto DiPalma, a senior prosecutor for Italy’s famed Direzione distrettuale antimafia — the Anti-Mafia Directorate — said in an interview.

“It’s a strategic place because it’s very close to the U.S. and it has been chosen by the ’Ndrangheta as a very important point for the international affairs. It’s a very good place for laundering money and a very good place for re-investing the money in the legal economy.”

DiPalma said Italian authorities have “passed important information to Canadian police” about what he calls “one of the most powerful organized crime groups in the world.”


Toronto Star Article

And Here Is A CBC Article

McGuinty says he has no evidence mob has infiltrated economy or politics
CBC News
Posted: Sep 18, 2012 10:20 PM ET
Last Updated: Sep 18, 2012

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty says he hasn't seen any evidence suggesting the Mafia's grip on Ontario's politicians and economy is as strong as alleged in Quebec, adding that if there were concerns, police would have told him.

The premier said Tuesday he has "no reason to believe" that officers would want to keep such allegations quiet or confidential if they are, in fact, grounded in reality.

"I would think they would have approached us in a constructive way some time ago," he said.

McGuinty was responding to a joint investigation by the Toronto Star newspaper and CBC's French-language investigative program Enquête, which turned up information that what’s thought to be the mightiest branch of the mob, the Calabrian Mafia or 'Ndrangheta, has extensively infiltrated his province's business and political spheres.

"We went to Italy to investigate the importance of the Italian Mafia in the world and especially Montreal, and anti-Mafia investigators there told us, 'Forget Montreal. It's about Toronto now, with the most powerful Mafia in the world, the Calabrian Mafia,'" Enquête host Alain Gravel said.

The program spoke to former RCMP chief superintendent Ben Soave, who headed up the RCMP's anti-Mafia efforts in Ontario until 2004.

Soave said the Ontario economy is probably more infiltrated by the mob than Quebec's, and that there's just as much, if not more, corruption of politicians.

"They're probably more active than in Quebec.… from political figures to law enforcement to people in the criminal justice system, to the manufacturing industries, they've done that," he said.

"They have the same problem, the same corruption. They have the same organized crime groups operating here. Devastating as they are in Quebec, but they're much lower profile."

Gravel said sources told him the Ontario-based Mafia gets less attention because "in Quebec, you get the bodies. Here, we get the money."

Or as Mafia authority and writer Antonio Nicaso said, "If they're not shooting on the street, they don't create a social alarm, and people don't scream and people won't call their MPs saying 'Oh, we have a problem.'"

Rizzuto power war

The Montreal area has seen a spate of firebombings and killings in recent months that some crime experts are blaming on a power war involving the Rizzuto crime family, which once dominated the city's Mafia. Vito Rizzuto, the reputed kingpin of the Montreal mob, has been in a U.S. prison since 2007 for his role in three 1981 murders in New York state but is to be released next month.

The Rizzutos are from the Sicilian branch of the Italian Mafia, known as the Cosa Nostra. With Vito Rizzuto out of the picture, one theory is that the Ontario-based Calabrians are trying to make a comeback in Montreal after losing control of the city about 30 years ago.

McGuinty said Tuesday that he certainly wants to hear any allegations from law enforcement about Calabrian influence in Ontario, but that they should go through the proper channels.

"If there are serious and warranted allegations they need to be made in a substantive way, not through the media," he said at an agricultural fair he was touring in Ayr, Ont.

"I would expect that people in positions among our police services would be drawing this to our attention at the earliest possible opportunity."

Talk of 'Ndrangheta influence in the province was also highlighted in testimony Tuesday at Quebec's public inquiry into corruption in the construction industry. Witness Valentina Tenti, a PhD criminologist and expert on the Italian Mafia, said Italian Mafia investigators have found the 'Ndrangheta to be particularly strong in the Greater Toronto Area and Thunder Bay, Ont.



CBC Article
Link includes Video

It is truly pitiful that retired RCMP chief superintendent Ben Soave made the remarks he did in his interview with Alain Gravel of Radio-Canada's Enquête program. Maclean's made some apt comments on its website (see http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/09/18/in-response-to-le-telejournal):

First off, let’s start with Gravel’s source.

As Gravel notes, Soave hasn’t worked for the RCMP since 2005. What he doesn’t mention is that Soave now heads the Soave Group of Companies, which according to its website provides “unparalleled security- and risk-management consulting, investigative and forensic accounting services to clients in Canada and around the world.” In other words, Gravel relied on an interview with a former cop who hasn’t worked for the RCMP for seven years—and whose current business has at best a tangential connection to his former work—to rebuke what Gravel says Maclean’s wrote two years ago. And it’s the only source for Gravel’s piece.

Even more pitiful is the remark made by Roberto Di Palma, a senior prosecutor for the Direzione distrettuale antimafia (DDA) who is quoted in the Toronto Star article. He is quoted as saying in an interview -- and the following is most likely a translation -- that "Canada is a virgin land for the ’Ndrangheta." How can you have faith in what he says when you know 'ndrangheta members first appeared in Ontario close to 100 years ago and that the Siderno Group ('ndrangheta) has been entrenched in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) for about 60 years?

The Operazione Il Crimine was a major antimafia Italian law-enforcement operation against the 'ndrangheta that culminated with mass arrests in July 2010, and four volumes of names, activities, and intelligence were published by the DDA of Reggio Calabria in relation to the operation.

The third volume identifies Siderno Group members in Calabria and in the GTA who had very close contact and intimate ties with the administration of the old Rizzuto organization (Vito, Nick Sr., Renda, Arcadi, Sollecito), members of the Caruana-Cun trera clan, and other Sicilian drug traffickers in the GTA. The volumes contain intelligence from as late as May 2010, so I'm puzzled as to how Di Palma has speculated elsewhere that the Ontario 'ndrangheta may have had a pivotal role in the decimation of the Rizzuto clan in Montreal -- this despite Di Palma's also saying that the 'ndrangheta has minimal or no presence in Quebec. (My opinion is that there is probably minimal 'ndrangheta presence in the Montreal area, but I also believe any such members had or have ties to Vito.)

Link to article about this topic, along with part of the article itself, appears below (please note that OPP is an initialism for Ontario Provincial Police):

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/artic...288381481237582

OPP commissioner disputes claims that organized crime is worse in Ontario than Quebec
Richard J. Brennan, National Affairs Writer
Toronto Star
Published on Wednesday September 19, 2012

Claims that organized crime has suddenly mushroomed in the province or has infiltrated Ontario politics are an exaggeration, OPP Commissioner Chris Lewis says.

“I don’t think we have a glaring organized crime problem that is bigger than Quebec,” Lewis told the Toronto Star on Wednesday.

The head of the Ontario Provincial Police said organized crime “without a doubt” exists in Ontario, but is not to the degree that some are suggesting.

Lewis was commenting on a Toronto Star story in which the RCMP and security experts said organized crime has spread its tentacles throughout Ontario.

RCMP Supt. Kevin Harrison warned that the Ndrangheta Mafia organization is now a national threat and that its power base is in the GTA. Retired RCMP chief superintendent Ben Soave told the Star that Mafia groups in the GTA are “probably more active (in Ontario) than Quebec” and have a large sphere of influence, including political leaders and law enforcement officials....

i doubt the mafia in toronto is stronger than montreal
montreal is clearly the heart of the italian oc in canada

I agree, m2w, but so many journalists and posters on organized-crime forums think only in terms of which Italian organized-crime group is pitted against another Italian OC group. These individuals would be served better by focusing on collaboration between the Italian OC groups in Toronto and Montreal.

Some RealDeal posters will be familiar with the information I've copied and pasted farther below, which comes rom the 2010 Operazione Il Crimine report, Procura della Repubblica Presso il Tribunale di Reggio Calabria, Direzione Distrettuale Antimafia, Volume 3, pp. 1923, 1924. Even if you can't read or understand Italian, look for the names of individuals and birthplaces.

The excerpt reveals Italian law enforcement's intelligence up to late May 2010 regarding the links between Siderno Group 'ndrangheta members (both in the Greater Toronto Area and Calabria) and the administration of the old Rizzuto organization (Vito, Nick Sr., Paolo Renda, Francesco Arcadi, Rocco Sollecito), the Caruana-Cun trera clan (presumably both in the Greater Toronto Area and the Montreal area), and Sicilian drug traffickers in the Greater Toronto Area (Ignazio Genua, who is the son of old-timer Nicola Genua, and Antonio Cammalleri, the uncle of Vito's wife).
___________________

In particolare:
- per quanto attiene l’operatività in Canada, COLUCCIO Antonio, nato a Marina di Gioiosa Jonica (RC) il 14.11.1969, secondo quanto comunicato dalla citata Direzione con la predetta nota, nell’anno 2006 è stato segnalato dalla Polizia canadese nell’ambito dell’operazione denominata “OBLIGATO”, perché sospettato di mantenere, in Canada, stretti collegamenti con GENUA Ignazio, nato il 29.07.1967, residente a Toronto, con il clan Cun tre[r]a-Caruana e con BRUZZESE Carmelo, nato a Grotteria (RC) il 13.07.1949, tutti ritenuti coinvolti nel traffico internazionale di sostanze stupefacenti;

- per quanto attiene i rapporti di BRUZZESE Carmelo (suocero di COLUCCIO Antonio) con i soggetti segnalati come operanti in Canada, rilevano gli elementi contenuti nel procedimento penale n° 10471/05 R.G.N.R. DDA di Roma a carico di RIZZUTO Vito + 24^309 [footnote number] (tra i quali BRUZZESE Carmelo). Il procedimento in questione ha, infatti, consentito di far emergere che:

[following bullet point indented in the report]
- in Canada, in particolare, nelle città di Toronto e Montreal è operativa una complessa organizzazione criminale dii tipo mafioso, composta da più cellule che racchiudono gruppi - famiglie di origine calabrese ed altri di origine siciliana. Il leader di tale organizzazione era, all’epoca, RIZZUTO Vito che, in virtù dei suoi legami con la famiglia mafiosa dei BONANNO e quella dei “CUN TRERA - CARUANA” aveva creato, nell’area di Montreal una struttura mafiosa ben radicata, collegata con quella di Toronto e con l’Italia;

^309 [footnote]
RIZZUTO Vito, nato a Cattolica Eraclea (AG) il 21.02.1946; RIZZUTO Nicolò (Nick), nato a Cattolica Eraclea (AG) il 18.02.1924; ZAPPIA Beniamino Gioiello, nato a Taranto il 04.01.1938; ARCADI Francesco, nato a Sant’Agata del Bianco (RC) il 06.10.1953; BALDUZZO Domenico, nato ad Arzignano (VI) l’11.10.1963; BORGHESI Corrado, nato a Bologna il 23.02.1970; BRAGANTINI Flavio, nato a Verona il 24.11.1958; BRUZZESE Carmelo, nato a Grotteria (RC) il 13.07.1949; CAMMALLERI Antonino, nato a Sciacca (AG) il 30.05.1942; FEDI Rodolfo, nato a Pesaro l’11.11.1937; ITALIANO Felice nato a Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto (ME) il 14.10.1946; MAIONE Gennaro nato il 25.10.1937; MEO Angelo, nato a San Pietro Infine (CE) il 30.03.1944; OLIVIERI Diego, nato a S. Massimo (VR) il 04.04.1948; PENNINO Vincenzo, nato a Cattolica Eraclea (AG) il 06.05.1939; RENDA Paolo, nato a Cattolica Eraclea (AG) il 10.09.1939; SOLLECITO Rocco, nato a Grumo Appula (BA) il 09.06.1948; SPAGNOLO Giuseppe, nato a Cattolica Eraclea (AG) l’11.10.1954; STRANGES Francesco, nato a Conflenti (CZ) il 04.06.1942; PAPALIA Robert, nato a Staiti (RC) il 23.01.1945; PAPALIA Antony, nato a Staiti (RC) il 23.01.1945; DANI Giancarlo, nato a Arzignano (VI) il 23.03.1949; TURRISI Mariano, nato a Piedimonte Etneo (CT) il 28.03.1954; TURRISI Giuseppe, nato a Piedimonte Etneo (CT) il 26.09.1963; HUXLEY Geoffrey Peter, nato il 20.12.1926 in Australia

- tale struttura, operativa nel traffico internazionale di stupefacenti, nel reinvestimento dei narcoproventi, nonché nell’acquisizione di appalti di opere pubbliche ed altri delitti connessi, aveva, come detto, stabili rapporti con appartenenti ad organizzazioni criminali autoctone, tra cui, per l’appunto BRUZZESE Carmelo che viene definito nella richiamata ordinanza di custodia cautelare come “il referente della “cellula calabrese” dell’organizzazione, strettamente legato ai vertici dell’organizzazione, in contatto con i più diretti collaboratori di Vito RIZZUTO e con lo stesso capo prima del suo arresto, avvenuto nel gennaio 2004, nonché con esponenti di spicco della criminalità organizzata calabrese. In particolare é impegnato alla realizzazione di un complessa struttura da destinare ad ospedale, utilizzando fondi pubblici in un appezzamento di terreno già di proprietà del BRUZZESE e di altri suoi soci…”. Nel corso delle indagini oltre a documentarsi rapporti funzionali all’esistenza del sodalizio con ARCADI Francesco, indicato dalla polizia canadese come il successore di Vito RIZZUTO (dopo il suo arresto – estradizione a New York), rilevano per l’odierno procedimento i rapporti tra BRUZZESE Carmelo e VERDUCI Carmine che, in ragione delle conversazioni censurate in quel contesto, viene definito in atti “un personaggio già emerso nelle indagini vicino al noto Carmelo BRUZZESE” e che aveva il compito di viaggiare sistematicamente tra l’Italia ed il Canada, fungendo da vettore di notizie tra il gruppo italiano e quello canadese, così come, peraltro, emerso nell’odierno procedimento. Si evidenziava, inoltre, la conferma circa i rapporti pregressi (2004) tra lo stesso BRUZZESE ed ANDRIANÒ Emilio^310 [footnote number].

L’esistenza in Canada di una radicata struttura criminale di matrice ‘ndranghetista era peraltro stata, come è noto, individuata nell’ambito della c.d. indagine SIDERNO GROUP.