Police Swoop on Mafia in Palermo and New York

Friday, 08 February 2008

ROME - The Palermo-New York drug trade was just one of the businesses Sicilian Mafia clans were looking to run with the families who had “fled” to the United States.

Relations with the Inzerillos, broken off in the 1980s by order of Totò Riina’s Corleonesi family, had been stitched back together by Brooklyn-based Franky Boy Calì and emerging gangsters Gianni Nicchi and Nicola Mandalà in the common cause of “enterprise creation”.

Operation “Old Bridge” went into action at dawn, coordinated by the director of the police special operational centre (SCO), Francesco Gratteri. Officers burst into houses at Brancaccio, Pagliarelli and Villagrazia to drag gang members from their beds. In the United States, FBI agents carried out a coordinated action reminiscent of the “Pizza Connection” arrests in the 1980s. Television cameras portrayed Filippo Casamento, 82, being hustled into a blue FBI van and filmed the arrest of his associates, the Gambinos. By the end of the operation, seventy-seven arrests had been made, twenty-three in Italy and fifty-four in America.

The men arrested rebuilt the “old bridge” with the help of Salvatore Lo Piccolo, the Mafia boss who had written to Bernardo Provenzano several times urging that the exiles should be encouraged to return. He was equally in favour of the emerging Mafiosi like Nicchi – on the run for over a year – and Calì. “There will be other important developments”, said the Palermo public prosecutor, Francesco Messineo. As the head of the Palermo anti-Mafia directorate, Piero Grasso, points out, “some of our informers have told us that there was an upcoming project for the Mafia boss Mandalà to import cut-price cocaine. This means it was very much on the cards”. The informers include Maurizio Di Gati and Mario Cusimano.

Drugs, extortion rackets and gambling were all embraced by the new Mafia agreements. Pivotal in the US was New York-born Calì, 43, who married Rosaria Inzerillo in his native city, sealing the alliance between the two gangs. He was visited by Mafiosi from Villabate, Torretta and Passo di Rigano.

Magistrates allege that “since 2004, many indications have been garnered that point to the enhancement of Sicilian Cosa Nostra interests in US territory. In the same period, we have documentary evidence of significant meetings in Palermo and the US that were followed by trips to the United States by prominent members of the Palermo Mafia. This leads us to believe that transatlantic contacts may have had the aim of concluding illicit deals”.

On 19 February 2004, police officers intercepted a phone call between Nicola Mandalà and his girlfriend Tiziana Messina. Mandalà told her he had to test a consignment of drugs, hinting that it was a very big deal: “Next week, one or two kilos will be coming in... they’ve received five hundred... I’m going to take another ten... and I’ll get them to keep it back for me...” Prosecutors allege that the drugs “come through United States channels”. On 15 February 2005, informer Mario Cusimano said: “Mandalà and Nino Rotolo had a project in Venezuela to take a major consignment of cocaine at five thousand euros a kilo. Ezio Fontana was also interested in it. An agreement had already been made with contacts in Venezuela but I don’t know how the drugs were to be transported”.

Then there is extortion and the long list of businesses that pay monthly protection money or, as in the case of the Cuffaro brothers’ haulage company, hire Mafia-sponsored employees.

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