Mafia News

Norshield founder assaulted at PVM

MONTREAL — Talk about protecting your assets.
Members of the Montreal Mafia displayed little tolerance for money-losing investments, according to a summary of the Project Colisée investigation and other evidence presented during a bail hearing for Nicolo Rizzuto and Francesco Del Balso in August 2007.

The disclosures shed new light on a bloody assault three years ago on John Xanthoudakis, founder of Norshield Financial Group. They also reveal the circumstances surrounding the 2005 suicide of another Montreal financier.

On the morning of Nov. 25, 2005, wiretaps recorded telephone conversations between Del Balso, 37, described by investigators as one of the younger leaders in the Montreal Mafia, and a man named Vincent Casola, described in a court summary as Xanthoudakis’s former partner.

The two men went over details of a meeting Del Balso wanted to set up with Xanthoudakis at a law office on the 21st floor of Place Ville Marie.

In another call overheard by the RCMP that same day, Cosimo Chimienti, an associate of Del Balso, was recorded telling Del Balso he had $300,000 invested with Xanthoudakis and wanted it all back.

In other conversations recorded weeks later, it became apparent Del Balso was dispatched by senior Mafia leaders to collect $5 million in all.

The Nov. 25 conversations came days after a report filed in Ontario Superior Court outlined bleak prospects for investors seeking to recover cash invested in Norshield’s Olympus United funds.

Norshield’s financial problems had started years earlier, when animation firm Cinar Corp. sued to recover more than $120 million invested in offshore securities. (A report submitted by receiver RSM Richter Inc. last year alleged there is evidence Norshield was engaged in several “breaches of Ontario securities law.” Xanthoudakis and his partners have been ordered to appear at a formal OSC hearing in October to answer allegations of filing false asset values.)

While Cinar and other investors in Norshield, who stand to lose $400 million, are left to wait for securities regulators and courts to sort out the mess, Del Balso and other Mafia leaders decided to take a more direct approach.

Del Balso and Lorenzo Giordano, another man described as a young leader in the Montreal Mafia, met with Xanthoudakis that afternoon. They were accompanied by a third man named Carlos Narvaez Orellana. All three were captured on a security camera as they got off an elevator and headed to the law office at Place Ville Marie.

What transpired during the meeting was described afterward in chilling detail as Del Balso talked to Chimienti and Casola over his wiretapped cellphone.

After Xanthoudakis refused to pay them, Del Balso and Giordano watched while Narvaez gave the financial executive a severe beating.

While Del Balso was driving away from Place Ville Marie, he spoke to Chimienti on his cellphone. The calls were played during Nicolo Rizzuto’s bail hearing last year.

Del Balso said Xanthoudakis “was pissing blood” after the beating. Chimienti wanted to know how the meeting ended. Del Balso replied that if Xanthoudakis didn’t get the message by now, he didn’t know what else to do.

Two minutes later, Del Balso and Casola discussed what happened over their cellphones.

“He’s f—–g bleeding all kinds over there on the boardroom floor,” Casola said while Del Balso chuckled.

Casola also told Del Balso that Xanthoudakis insisted he was broke because Norshield’s assets were frozen.

Judging by the questions Casola asked Del Balso, he wasn’t a witness to the beating although he was at Place Ville Marie that day.

In December 2005, the RCMP recorded other conversations that revealed Del Balso was ultimately seeking $5 million for a group of people who had invested funds with Norshield. Del Balso had been advised to convince Xanthoudakis into securing a loan using a property worth more than $5 million that belonged to someone Xanthoudakis knew. The loan was to be used either to pay back the people for whom Del Balso was collecting or to create a new investment.

The issue reached the highest levels of the Montreal Mafia that month. On Dec. 22, hidden microphones at the Consenza Social Club, the Mafia’s former headquarters in St. Léonard, recorded a conversation between Del Balso and Rocco Sollecito, one of the four senior leaders of the organization. They discussed putting a $5-million lien on the property and how any financing from it would be handled by business associates less known to the police.

Del Balso was growing impatient with Xanthoudakis, who had insisted on showing him he could pass a lie detector test to prove he did not steal money invested in Norshield.

During a conversation with Sollecito, Del Balso said he told Xanthoudakis he’d use the polygraph wires to strangle him. Sollecito and Del Balso appeared confident they could settle the issue involving the $5-million lien that day.

Sollecito is overheard on the tapes asking a man named Antonio Rossi to talk Xanthoudakis into settling with them that day. At the time, Rossi owned Vehitech, a South Shore company that equipped police vehicles with equipment. Vehitech has since been replaced at its Boucherville location by another company that outfits emergency vehicles with equipment. A representative from the new company said recently that Rossi no longer works there and was unable to provide a number where he could be reached.

Norshield owned shares in Vehitech before the investment scandal broke. (According to current federal and provincial incorporation records, Vehitech is now part of a numbered holding company. Xanthoudakis is listed as its vice-president and Rossi as its president.)

Despite knowing Rossi through Vehitech, Xanthoudakis didn’t agree with Sollecito and Del Balso’s proposal.

On Feb. 28, 2006, Rossi was recorded on a wiretap informing Del Balso that the Montreal police had opened an investigation into the assault at Place Ville Marie. On March 8, Del Balso was arrested along with Giordano and Narvaez. They were released on a promise to appear in court on a later date.

A little more than a week later, on March 16, a conversation recorded at the Consenza Social Club indicated the organization’s leaders, including Vito Rizzuto’s father, Nicolo, and Francesco Arcadi, 53, were putting more pressure on Del Balso to collect money from Xanthoudakis. But because he was already facing a criminal charge for the assault, Del Balso appeared hesitant. He told Paolo Renda, Vito Rizzuto’s brother-in-law: “I wanna take care of it, but it’s just -”

“Yes, but not this way, I’m sorry,” Renda replied, adding later: “You have to tell me yes or no.”

The next day, Del Balso received more bad news. The Gazette had published a report on the three arrests made in the assault on Xanthoudakis. Because the trio hadn’t been formally accused, their names were not included in the report. When Del Balso heard the news, he looked up the article on the Internet and read it out loud to Giordano, who laughed.

“Thank God they didn’t put our names,” Del Balso said afterward.

“Thank God for real, bro,” Giordano replied in apparent relief that the beating hadn’t yet drawn attention to the senior leaders in the Mafia.

A few days later, Xanthoudakis withdrew his complaint.

In April 2006, Del Balso and Rossi were recorded discussing the $5-million property again, but the summary does not indicate whether any transaction was actually made to get money back for the people for whom Del Balso was collecting.

Included in the same court summary is another case where Mafia members used similar methods to recover money invested through Magdi Garas Samaan, a financial expert who lived in Rivière des Prairies and had convinced several people he could earn them 30 per cent on investments in just six months.

On Nov. 29, 2005, Samaan tried to kill himself, which caused a great deal of concern for Del Balso. During the same period he was chasing Xanthoudakis for money, wiretapped conversations indicated Del Balso was desperately trying to recover huge sums from Samaan after being warned he was a scam artist.

In Del Balso’s eyes, the suicide attempt only confirmed his suspicions.

Three weeks after his suicide attempt, on Dec. 20, 2005, Samaan checked in to a room at the Motel Florence in Brossard. The motel’s owners found his body on Christmas Day. The owner was unable to open the door to the room because it had been locked from the inside.

The Longueuil police were called in to break down the door. According to the coroner’s report on Samaan’s death, an empty bottle of extra-strength Aspirin was found near his body. Samaan left no suicide note.

The death was ruled a suicide by overdose by the provincial coroner’s office. In the five days between Samaan checking in to the motel and his body being found, Del Balso was overheard making hasty arrangements to have Samaan’s spouse and stepdaughter sign over ownership of his luxury house on Gouin Blvd. and two other properties Samaan owned.

The arrangements for the house, which Del Balso wanted to take control of through Malts Financing, a company the RCMP suspects was used as a front to launder money through transactions like mortgage loans. It was created in 2001 by one of Del Balso’s associates who is facing drug-trafficking charges in Project Colisée.

The house is now owned by a Montreal businessman whose brother was often recorded attending meetings at the Consenza Social Club where he discussed financial matters with senior leaders of the Mafia.

According to land registry records, the house went through a series of transactions before it was sold for more than $1 million in April to the Montreal businessman by Malts Financing.

Financiers felt Mafia’s wrath – Paul Cherry – Montreal Gazette – Thursday, September 18, 2008 -This story was found at: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/story.html?id=e86f25ab-8e63-46b3-805c-d2078d58926c

Trackback URI | Comments RSS