A church service and demonstration tonight will mark the first time people outside Italy have mobilized against the Mafia. And if Antonio Nicaso, gets his way, Canada will become a leader in the investigation and study of world-wide organized crime. The Toronto Anti-Mafia Committee – set up last week after the assassination of a second anti-Mafia Sicilian judge – plans to take its message to the streets tonight with a torch-light demonstration and mass.
Nicaso, 27, has tracked organized organized crime connections across the world, from Italy to Australia, and the Soviet Union to the U.S. And often, far too often, he says, those connections cut across Canada, many times into Metro. Nicaso believes tonight’s activities come at just the right time. "It’s never too late," he said yesterday. "When the community has to say ‘No to the Mafia, it’s just the right time."
Nicaso, who’s authored four books on the Mafia and is working on a fifth, said Canada has been a haven for mobsters and mob money for decades. "The Mafia is a dangerous phenomenon in Canada. Since the 1930s, organized crime has used Canada as a country to launder their profit in." He believed billions of dollars have been funneled through Canada – much of it through Metro. While praising police combatting organized crime, Nicaso said Canada’s weak financial laws make it easy to launder drug money into clean real-estate cash.
"The RCMP is an excellent police force," Nicaso adds. "But they don’t have the instruments to combat the Mafia’s financial crime." Nicaso believes the next step in the anti-Mafia campaign should be the formation of a centre of organized crime studies in Canada.
"Canada is the only country in the world that doesn’t have a centre of studies. It would bring police and politicians and journalist together to understand the scope of Mafia and Mafia-like groups in Canada." Organizers stressed the thrust of committee is all organized crime, from Jamaicans and Colombians to Japanese and Chinese. The committee has received support from numerous ethnic groups.
Yesterday it received a letter of support from the National Congress of lawyers in Italy. Last night Nicaso got a letter from Giovanni Spadolini, president of the Italian Senate, praising the committee’s "act of courage" in organizing the rally. "I know what it means to confront the terrorist threats of the Mafia," he wrote, citing the memory f "those who have fallen victim to the Mafia." Organizers of tonight’s rally, set for 7 p.m. at Earlscourt Park at St.Clair Ave. W and Caledonia Rd., hope they’re starting a groundswell of resistance to the Mafia in the community.
July 29, 1992