Mar 17 2007
As police tapes rolled, conversation flowed at cafe
Social club was HQ for mob bosses: files
A small St. Leonard cafe was the headquarters and the centre of money distribution for Montreal’s top five Italian Mafia bosses, who took a cut of every drug-trafficking and illegal-gambling dollar made by their gang members, according to court documents.
The cafe is a modest, sparsely furnished storefront business where an elderly Italian gentleman makes an excellent espresso allonge. But police allege that for years some of Montreal’s - and indeed Canada’s - most powerful underworld figures made this coffee bar the centre of their criminal empire.
Located in a strip mall at 4891 Jarry St. E., the cafe was called the Consenza Social Club until December 2005, when the name was changed to the Associazione Cattolica Ereclea after a small town in southern Sicily where Montreal’s reputed Mafia chief Nicolo Rizzuto grew up.
Police claim that for years Nicolo and his son, Vito Rizzuto, presided over a crime syndicate of illegal gambling and drug trafficking. Both men are now in jail awaiting trial, but their golf trophies still sit over the cafe bar.
In a small office behind the main cafe, the bosses met daily to discuss business and divide their profits, court documents say. Each week, police allege, thousands of dollars in tightly packed wads of bills, often delivered in paper or plastic bags, flowed through the cafe’s front door, only to leave minutes later hidden in the socks and pockets of the bosses.
From June 2003 to November 2006, police from the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, who had been investigating the Italian Mafia since September 2002, recorded thousands of conversations at the social club.
Even though the bosses were clearly unaware of the secret microphones, they often spoke in guarded, often cryptic, language.
The Money
A typical day at the Consenza Social Club had various bosses going in and out morning, noon and night, chatting with each other and counting money in the back office as elderly Italian men played cards in the cafe.
