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From New York to Australia, the investigations of the police over the world tell us that the Calabrian clans defeated Cosa Nostra in the struggle for control of the world's trafficking routes. Here's how the new crime bosses have knocked out the old godfathers.
Laval, a suburb in the north of Montreal, Canada. First of March . Lorenzo Giordano stops the blue SUV Kia on the snowy asphalt of the parking, of the Carrefour Multisports, close to highway 440. Turn off the motor, the crucifix tied to the rearview mirror is swinging. Are the 8:45, the morning is cold. A killer comes out on the machine side and shoots him in the head and throat, shattering the window glass. Lorenzo "Skunk" Giordano, 52, died shortly after in hospital.
Carlton, Italian neighborhood of Melbourne, Australia. March 15. A tanned man with nicely combed hair comes out Gelobar, his ice cream shop. He is walking, it's just past midnight. It is alone, and the road is dark. They shoot in the shoulders, shooting from a moving car, without stop the car.
Three hours later a garbage man comes down from the truck near the dumpster. Close there is the corpse of Joseph "Pino" Acquaro, 50, a prominent lawyer. Again Laval, May 27. At the bus stop on Boulevard St. Elzéar is seated a man, in his thirties, dressed all in black. black shoes, blacks pants, black jacket, glasses blacks. Are the 8.30.The white Bmw of Rocco Sollecito, as planned, passes on the boulevard. The traffic light is red, it stops. Black man gets up and points gun against the car window. Rocco "Sauce" Sollecito, 62, slides on the seat, smeared with his blood, shot dead.
Italians who speak English and shoot. Other Italians who speak English and die. Canada, Australia, United States. Reggio Calabria. The blood earthquake has a silent epicenter, New York. And emerging clans who took too much power, as the Ursinos the 'ndranghetists of Gioiosa Ionica. The shock wave has spread across the planet. Lives drowned in the lead "Skunk", "Pino" and "Sauce" are aftershocks. They call it the "world war of the Mafia".
THE SIXTH FAMILY. New York, then. Nothing is as before. The big five Cosa Nostra families, Gambino, Bonanno, Lucchese, Genovese and Colombo are no longer what they were. This is documented by the latest investigations of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), conducted together with investigators from the Central Operations Service (Sco) of the Italian police.
Last Thursday, the FBI has captured another 46, including Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut: capos, made men and associates of Gambino, Genovese, Bonanno. It also finished inside the 23 year old John Gotti Jr., the nephew of the last great American Cosa Nostra boss.
Besieged by inquiries and weakened by a difficult generational change , the Sicilians are yielding space in a seemingly almost completely bloodless way to the Calabrian Mafia. In the Big Apple, the Commisso clan and of the Aquino-Coluccio clan have settled from years, but who is claiming for himself the role of "sixth family" are the the Ursino of Gioiosa Ionica. And that's a problem for everyone.
A sixth family, in fact, is already there. While not allowed in the New York criminal elite, the Rizzuto of Montreal, in Canada, have historically close ties with the Bonanno. If there is to set up a business of a certain weight - lots of cocaine, illegal weapons, money laundering - they are the referents . A report that by a bit 'of time is no longer so solid.
Between 2012 and 2013 an FBI confidential source reveals that Francesco Ursino, the boss of the homonymous clan historic ally of Cataldos of Locri, asked the Gambino to work on New York streets "just like a sixth family" . Asked so to speak. In this round are the Sicilian Cosa Nostra to be faced with an offer he can not refuse, because when he knocked on the door of the Gambino.
Francesco Ursino actually had already taken everything: the trafficking routes, contacts with Mexican and Colombian cartels, control of ports and cargos. The boss was speaking on behalf of not only one family, but of what the investigators in the investigation New Bridge (which will lead to the capture of the boss) define a "consortium" of the Locri clan. To refuse would have meant for Gambino wage a senseless war, and an uncertain outcome. Better to agree and accept the fact. On the global market for cocaine, "'Ndrangheta rules".
The BROKER AND THE SOUTH AMERICAN Cartels. The Calabrians worked in the shadows for years in New York, in the basements of their pizzerias and in the back room of their "Italian restaurant". Flied to Bogota and San Jose in the weekend, posing as tourists. "If you want to know what happens in New York, look for in Central America; if you want to know what happens among the Cartels of the Gulf look who's boss in New York," says Anna Sergi, criminologist at the University of Essex, a scholar the projections of ' 'Ndrangheta abroad. And in Central and South America happens that the Calabrian command. Mark the territory. Engage intermediaries. Shoot as little as possible. More finance, less trouble.
Deep throat who explained to the Goddess and the FBI what was moving in the criminal underbelly of the Big Apple is called Christopher Castellano. He owns a nightclub in Queens, the Kristal's, which he uses to hide what it really is: a broker of Los Zetas, the dangerous Mexican cartel paramilitary of army deserters who uses him to trade drugs in the States and in Europe . With drug traffickers, Christopher made a lot of money.
The party did not last long, though. They arrested him in 2008, and he, just to get out of jail,flips. Sells to the two Calabrian policemen: Giulio Schirripa and that "Greg." He tells the story of these two Italians who, using the pizzerias as cover and the money of the 'Ndrangheta as collateral, are moving tons of cocaine hidden in cans of fruit transported by container ships. "They have a pipeline across the oceans," says Castellano.
If run large white powder stocks , which from Costa Rica reach the US, Canada, the Old World and Australia, it is their stuff. Distribute, sorting, organizing trips of ships, open up bogus companies to import-export, corrupt customs officials. In New York, they go to dinner with the Genovese. In San José meet with the men of Arnoldo de Jesus Rojas Guzman, the leader of Alajuela cartel. In Reggio Calabria refer to Alvaro clan. They are "facilitators", unexpected because uncensored: create the conditions to bring the white powder from the laboratories in the jungle of Costa Rica to the consumer nose. Schirripa, arrested along with Castellano, is the archetype Calabrian emigrants to the conquer New York. Gregory "Greg" Gigliotti, the epigone.
Christopher Castellano has become dead flesh in the moment when he opened his mouth with federal agents. July fourth of 2010, the United States celebrates Independence Day. In Howard Beach, Queens, the show of fireworks has just begun before midnight. But Castellano has no eyes, is fumbling budgets to look for the car keys. One shot, back of the head. Nobody notices anything. Castellano won't flips to the FBI again.
THE MAN WHO ATE THE HEART. Meanwhile, however, investigators have tapped the phones and filled with bugs restaurants of Gigliotti in Queens, including the famous 'Cucino a modo mio' mentioned in trendy magazines. "There is not a gram of cocaine in Europe that has not passed through the hands of Gregory", often repeating his Italian associates, terrified by the bluster of Gigliotti.
When he gets angry, with his Calabrian dialect, mixed of American slang can say terrible things: "I once ate a piece of kidney and a piece of heart ", he yells with his wife, irritated by another Calabrian who is trying to fit in his business. The center of his business is Costa Rica, where he had direct contact with drug traffickers thanks to a dense network of brokers and trustees. "And tell him do not do too much the clever ..." he repeats them, when they send them to deal in South America.
He accumulates money, the policemen of the SCO and the FBI listen and anticipate some of his moves. The port of Antwerp, 16 pounds of cocaine seized. Port of Valencia 40 pounds, Wilmington 44 pounds. Port of Rotterdam 3 tons. Then on 8 May arrest him. He ends up inside her son, Angelo. But a few weeks later back into the wild, with a five million dollars bail. Paid in cash.
THE CANADIAN SLAUGHTER. Out of the game the referents of the Alvaro, New York is taken by the Ursino. Including contacts with the South Americans. The earthquake shook reverberate in Canada, where the hierarchies crumble. And with them the pax mafiosa. Since the eighties, the italian criminals emigrants there had divided the business between Toronto and Montreal. To the sicilian Rizzutos the drugs, to the Calabrian arrived from Siderno the gambling,and the loansharking. The map was designed in 2010, by Italians investigators who worked on the maxi investigation 'Crime' (which for the first time identified all the ndrangheta vertices) and is still valid. Three years ago Vito Rizzuto, the boss, dies of cancer.
In the following months, coinciding with the rise of the Ursino in the North American quadrant four of the six members of the "Council", of the Rizzutos are killed. The other two are saved only because they are in jail. The last to die was Rocco "Sauce" Sollecito. A few weeks ago in Montreal he was going to end in a coffin Marco Pizzi, 46, cocaine importer for the clans according to police, escaped by a whisker to his assassins that had buffered with a stolen car. They were masked and armed. "The Calabrian attacked the old powers", reasons an investigator. "It's' Ndrangheta against mafia". The world war, then.
THE AUSTRALIAN FAIDA. The trail of blood stretches until to Australia, where the Calabrian coup on cocaine routes destabilized balances that are held up by the end of the seventies. The Barbaro family seems to have lost his force, and contacts with new importers would pass into the hands of Tony and Frank Madafferi. In Melbourne the Calabrian fight against the Calabrian. Frank Madafferi and Pasquale "Pat" Barbaro were investigated in 2008 in the trial for the biggest load of methamphetamine ever intercepted in the history of the fight against drug trafficking 4.4 tonnes of ecstasy, for a value of 500 million Australian dollars (340 million euro) in tablets stowed in a ship carrying cans of peeled tomatoes. But that trial is not the only thing that Tony and Pat Madafferi Barbaro, then sentenced to life imprisonment, have in common.
To join them, as often happens, even the lawyer's choice: the professional Italian-American Joseph Acquaro. Man found dead by the garbage man in front of the ice cream, last March. Investigations are still at stake although a couple of items have attracted the attention on Madafferi: in particular some interceptions stating he own Melbourne ("It is mine, not of Pasquale") and says he is ready to kill the rival ( "I eat his throat"). But above all the story of a repentant who explained to the police as the gangster underworld of Melbourne everyone to know the reward that Tony had just put on the lawyer's head, apparently guilty of having started to talk a bit 'too much with journalists and investigators: 200 thousand Australian dollars.
AN ARREST IN FIUMICINO. Those who have cashed it is not known. What is known is that a few days before the murder, at Fiumicino airport the Locri police arrested Antonio Vottari, 31, accused of running drug trafficking between South America and Europe on behalf of the clans of San Luca. He is returning from Melbourne, where for years he spent his fugitive with a student visa. The tide of the mafia World War was decided in Calabria.
Everything starts from there. And all, sooner or later, there comes back.
