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Alleged Mafia leader Rizzuto, 5 others plead guilty to Project Colisée charges

MONTREAL — Nicolo Rizzuto will learn next month whether he will walk free despite having admitted for the first time in court that he is part of a criminal organization.

Rizzuto, 84, the father of Vito Rizzuto, 62, the reputed head of the Montreal Mafia, pleaded guilty Thursday to possession of the proceeds of crime as well as possession of the proceeds of crime for the benefit of, the direction of, or in association with a criminal organization.

Nicolo Rizzuto and five other men alleged to be leaders in the Montreal Mafia appeared before Quebec Court Judge Jean-Pierre Bonin at the Gouin courthouse Thursday to enter guilty pleas to charges stemming from a three-year investigation into the organization.

Rizzuto’s gangsterism conviction carries a maximum 14-year sentence.

But some sources familiar with the plea bargaining process that produced Thursday’s guilty pleas have said a joint recommendation will be made that would see him leave a detention centre the day he is sentenced. The sources have said Rizzuto’s sentencing recommendation will be limited to the time he has already served behind bars, almost the equivalent of four years, plus probation.

Crown prosecutor Yvan Poulin would not comment on what sentencing recommendations will be made next month. “We discussed the case and we arrived at an agreement,” he said.

“You will know what the agreement is on Oct. 16. According to us, it serves the interest of justice, the interests of the public and it avoids a quite lengthy and costly trial,” Poulin said.

Dressed in a pale cardigan sweater that made him look very much like the great-grandfather he is, Rizzuto nodded yesterday when Bonin asked if he agreed to plead guilty to the two counts.

It marked the first time the octogenarian Rizzuto has been convicted of a crime in Canada since the organization that bears his name reputedly took control of the Montreal Mafia about three decades ago.

But Rizzuto managed to sidestep some of the more serious charges to which four of the other reputed leaders in the Montreal Mafia pleaded guilty at the Gouin courthouse yesterday.

Rizzuto has been behind bars since Nov. 22, 2006, when arrests were made in Project Colisée, the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit investigation that started in 2003. More than 80 people were arrested in the investigation, but Rizzuto and the five others were singled out as leaders.

Rizzuto’s son-in-law, Paolo Renda, 69, pleaded guilty to the same two charges yesterday as the older man, as well as to three weapons offences related to firearms seized from his luxury home on Antoine Berthelet Ave.

During the investigation, Rizzuto and Renda were revealed to have operated as part of a four-man committee whose members made key decisions about the organization’s activities.

Francesco Arcadi, 54, and Rocco Sollecito 60, were the other two members of the committee. They pleaded guilty to all-

encompassing conspiracy and gangsterism charges.

“It was a group that, as the indictment points out, was involved in a multitude of crimes. We’re talking about importing cocaine, cocaine trafficking, extortion, gaming houses and bookmaking,” Poulin said.

Francesco Del Balso, 38, and Lorenzo Giordano, 45, both described as young leaders in the organization, pleaded guilty to even broader conspiracy charges that include extortion.

Del Balso also pleaded guilty to filing false income tax returns between 2003 and 2006, a period where he pretended to work at a grocery store while living the high life of a millionaire.

He also pleaded guilty to cocaine trafficking, a charge that stemmed from Project Ziplock, a 2003 police investigation into a member of the Hells Angels. When suspects were rounded up in Project Ziplock early in 2004, Del Balso consulted a lawyer to try to find out why he wasn’t among those arrested. He did not know he was targeted in a much broader investigation.

“They controlled the members of the organization on their territory. They also controlled a well-established territory that included Rivière des Prairies and St. Léonard,” Marc Fortin, an RCMP investigator and member of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, said during Rizzuto’s bail hearing in August 2007.

Fortin quickly added that their activities weren’t limited to eastern Montreal.

“We heard them use the terms ‘the Italians’ and ‘the Family.’ Very rarely the term ‘Mafia’ would come out, but it did … sometimes,” Fortin said when asked how the members referred to themselves.

To further the argument that the Rizzuto organization operated much like a Sicilian Mafia family, the prosecution was prepared to bring in an expert witness from Italy, Brigadier-General Angelilo Pellegrini, who analyzed evidence gathered in Project Colisée.

During Rizzuto’s bail hearing in 2007, prosecutor Alexandre Dalmau said that with Pellegrini’s testimony, the Crown was prepared to “establish or make parallels to methods of operating that were similar with the criminal organization here in Montreal.”

“He is prepared to describe those criminal organizations in Italy, define what a man of honour is to these organizations, describe the activities of a Mafia family, the role of a boss and to testify about a certain type of vocabulary they use,” Dalmau said. “The same terms were used by the organization in Montreal.”

Rizzuto is widely believed to have orchestrated the shift in power in the late 1970s that saw the Rizzuto organization take control of an existing Mafia organization run by mob boss Vic Cotroni, who died of cancer in 1984.

Despite this, Rizzuto’s only conviction since then was for cocaine possession in Venezuela in 1988. By the time he returned home to Montreal in 1993, his son Vito was considered by police to be the head of the organization. Vito Rizzuto is serving a 10-year sentence in the United States for participating in the 1981 murders of three New York mobsters.

When Fortin testified in 2007, he described an organization that is still very much involved in the same rackets the Cotroni family controlled in Montreal from the 1950s to the late 1970s. Fortin said they provided protection to certain Montreal-area bars and offered their services as persuasive debt collectors to even legitimate businesses.

Fortin said Project Colisée certainly struck at the heart of the organization. But he also offered a caution, saying:

“It was dismantled in part, but it’s certain it still exists.”

Rizzuto might soon walk free – Paul Cherry – The Gazette – Thursday, September 18, 2008 – This story was found at: http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=d82d5710-d7e8-4720-9a70-e327fab39934

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