The founder of "Guess Jeans" borrowed money from the Mafia The RCMP allegedly heard him parley with Leonardo Rizzuto and Stefano Sollecito
The adopted Montrealer Georges Marciano, founder of Guess Jeans, would have turned to two leaders of the mafia to borrow $ 325,000, learned our Bureau of Investigation.
This is what is revealed by the police filings of Operation Magot against organized crime, which can now be made public.
It is difficult to know if the ex-collector of works of art, beautiful cars and jewels has paid off all his debts to Leonardo Rizzuto and Stefano Sollecito, leaders of the Italian underworld. In August 2015, however, the two men were impatient, according to a conversation that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) intercepted in the lobby of the Hotel Montreal, the luxury hotel of Georges Marciano, where the businessman has hung from many works of great masters like Andy Warhol and Joan Miró, in Old Montreal. "Stefano [Sollecito] wants to be paid and George [Marciano] says he has deposited a check in Leonardo [Rizzuto] 's account of about $ 325,000, in an account in the name of a company," he says. affidavit of a police officer produced to obtain wiretap warrants. Incorrect numbers
Sollecito responds that these "numbers are incorrect". Then Rizzuto says "he meets people at the office in Loris," referring to the lawyer Loris Cavaliere, arrested at the same time as the two men as part of Operation Magot, in November 2015.
The documents do not say whether they have settled their financial dispute, but a judge addresses this loan in its 2016 decision on the release of the two Mafiosi.
He mentions that the investigator on file "acknowledges that the transaction between Leonardo Rizzuto and the businessman Marciano can not be qualified as a criminal transaction and that it appears legal", without giving details.
At that time, the former tycoon of faded jeans was coming out of a long conflict with American creditors. In 2013, former employees managed to seize his Montreal assets for US $ 86 million in debt after he was found guilty of defamation and "serious mental suffering".
The founder of Guess Jeans did not want to explain his loan to Rizzuto and Sollecito.
"Mr. Marciano has no comments to make," said one of his lawyers contacted by our Investigation Bureau, Quentin Leclercq.
His former employee, Donato Trafficante, who was also present at this meeting with Rizzuto and Sollecito, according to the police document, assures that he keeps no memory of it.
"I never heard of money he borrowed from them," he says. Mr. Marciano has nothing to do with them. "
Georges Marciano and Donato Trafficante have never been charged in connection with Operation Magot, which resulted in the conviction of King Gregory Woolley to eight years in prison for cocaine trafficking.
