Jul 28 2007
Montreal mafia languishes in leader-less limbo
MONTREAL — After the RCMP raided the Montreal mafia eight months ago - and with alleged mafia boss Vito Rizzuto serving time in a U.S. prison — the city’s criminal organization is now in limbo, says an expert on organized crime.
“They seem to be in a waiting pattern,” says Pierre de Champlain, a retired RCMP intelligence analyst.
“(The RCMP’s Project)Colisee was an operation that hit very hard. Not only hard, but it was like an earthquake hitting the decisional structure of the Rizzuto family. . . . The administration level of a criminal family was arrested,”de Champlain said, adding, “It’s too early to say who might be the new leader or temporary leader.”
Even three men pegged less than a year ago as possible successors seem to be out of the picture.
The latest sign of uncertainty in the Montreal mafia came Thursday when Moreno Gallo appeared before the National Parole Board. Gallo, 62, is one of three men de Champlain listed in a news story last October as possible successors to Rizzuto, the reputed head of organized crime in Montreal. At the time, Rizzuto had been extradited to the United States to face an old murder charge. He has since been convicted and sentenced to 10 years.
Gallo was not among the 90 people arrested in the Project Colisee raids that came a month after the article, but he has been caught in the fallout. Sentenced to life in prison for a 1973 killing, he was released about 25 years ago on condition he meet with a parole officer four times a year. Evidence the RCMP gathered during the Colisee investigation, however, led to his parole being suspended in April.
The hearing on Thursday was Gallo’s attempt to have his parole reinstated. But his lawyer, Jacynthe Lanctot, aborted the hearing over some questions the board was asking; she said a prosecutor is still considering charges against Gallo and he should not say anything about Project Colisee until a decision is made.
Among the evidence gathered by the police were video recordings of Gallo meeting with some of the most important figures arrested in Project Colisee, such as Vito’s father Nicolo Rizzuto Sr., inside a back office of the Consenza Social Club. Gallo was secretly videotaped on four separate occasions between December 2004 and August 2005, each time delivering what appeared to be a large amount of money.
During one visit, the wad of cash was about an inch thick. On that occasion, Gallo was accompanied on his delivery by Tony Mucci, the mobster who tried to kill Jean-Pierre Charbonneau in 1973 when the latter was working as a reporter at Le Devoir.
Over the years, there have been conflicting reports about Gallo’s possible involvement in organized crime, said Marie Sarrazin, a Correctional Service Canada representative, during Thursday’s hearing. In 1999, the RCMP believed he was out. But the Project Colisee investigation indicates things have changed.
“He is not a good citizen in terms of someone who is on parole for life,” Sarrazin said while recommending Gallo’s parole officially be revoked.
“We can’t think that someone who associates with the heads of a criminal organization is not a risk (to reoffend).”
Sarrazin said Gallo describes himself as “a peacemaker who solves problems between families.” He also told her he grew up with many of the mobsters he was seen associating with during Project Colisee and that it can’t be helped if their paths often cross.
It was when parole commissioner Constance Bennett asked Gallo to elaborate on his “peacemaker” role that his lawyer called a halt to the proceedings.
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