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A
multi-national task force led by Canadian
police erased 30
years of failure Wednesday by arresting the
last of the untouchables.Police in several
countries cheered the arrest of Alfonso
Caruana, 52, a man police say is the boss of
one of the largest, richest and most
powerful drug-smuggling and money-laundering
organizations in
the world. If police are right, the Mafia
boss and his criminal organization
is bloated on huge profits from decades of
smuggling heroin, marijuana and cocaine into
North America. The clan, originally from the
dirt-poor town of Siculiana, Sicily, created
a billion-dollar
reach that encompassed the globe.
The two-year RCMP probe was dubbed Project
Omerta - the term for
the Mafia code of silence - and was a
twisting, complicated ride bringing officers
face-to-face with global organized crime at
the
highest level. It reached from poppy fields
in Turkey and heroin refineries in
Thailand to high finance in Switzerland and
money-laundering in
Canada. Police say it included connections
with an extremist group
in Turkey who allegedly had a role in the
shooting of the Pope, an
alleged liaison with the powerful Camorra
Mafia and the underworld lord of Asia's
Golden Triangle. Police in Italy say the
clan forged strong ties in more than 14
countries with perhaps a hundred companies,
accounts in dozens of banks and other
financial holdings. At the centre of it all,
police in several countries and organized
crime experts say, is Alfonso Caruana. As
this empire was being built, the
Cuntrera-Caruana clan were also rewriting
the rules of engagement for the Mafia. They
were not tied to a geographic area, as is
traditionally the case for a Mafia
family. The family moved to Montreal in the
1960s when police pressure in Italy grew.
Police reports say they soon built lucrative
drug operations in North and South America,
Europe and Asia. By the mid-1980s Caruana
was living in England but left the day after
British police struck a drug ring and found
he had paid the
service bill of a car used by those
arrested. He still spent much of his time in
Montreal, but when Revenue
Canada seized more than $800,000 from his
bank account for taxes he hadn't paid, he
disappeared from Canada. The base of their
operations again became Venezuela, where
Caruana's three brother-in-laws - the
Cuntreras - had been hob-nobbing with that
country's social and political elite. A
former
president of Venezuela was a guest at the
wedding of one of the Cuntrera daughters.
Reunited in South America, the clan is said
to have run an empire
of more than 50 companies. Their welcome
wore thin there as well. Three Cuntrera
brothers, Caruana's brother-in-laws, were
extradited to Italy where they now sit in
prison. It was around that time that Caruana
returned to Canada, renting his house in
Woodbridge, Ont., in June of 1996.
Caruana was
seen as the last of the untouchables - those
men of
such power and wealth they seemed above both
the law and the underworld. ``The
Cuntrera-Caruanas are a family above the
underworld, above the mob. They are
independent and yet work with everyone. They
are a
higher level,'' says Antonio
Nicaso,
an internationally recognized
specialist in organized crime. ``They were
the envy of the
underworld.'' The family dealt with anyone
who could put profit in their pockets.
They weren't involved in the bloody Mafia
wars that raged through
Sicily.
RCMP Inspector
Ben Soave said police tackled the
Cuntrera-Caruana
clan using the family's own tactics -
erasing international borders.
``Borders should no longer represent an
opportunity for organized crime,'' he said.
Police
said the clan has now largely been
dismantled and most of
the family is in custody in Canada and in
Italy. |
