Pizza Connection
The Pizza Connection is a drug ring in the USA through which various "families" of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra smuggled drugs - especially heroin - from Sicily into the USA for years . Simple pizzerias served as camouflage. This gave the drug ring its name. The heroin was smuggled in tomato cans , among other things . Some of the income from the heroin business was laundered through the pizzerias accounts .
The encroachment of the Sicilians on American territory took place in consultation with the local American Cosa Nostra , in particular with the Five Families of New York City . The drug trafficking had been a controversial matter in American circles from the beginning, because even more than the alcohol prohibition , the trafficking in heroin was subject to a very high pressure of prosecution from the beginning, since it fell under the jurisdiction of the FBI . Wealthy mobsters therefore preferred not to be directly involved in this business and continued to favor gambling and illegal prostitution , which fell under the jurisdiction of local, more easily bribed authorities. Therefore, the drug trade was deliberately left to the Italian mafia for a profit sharing.
In addition, the RICO Act was introduced in 1970 , which threatened the American Mafiosi with long prison sentences and which was increasingly applied in the 1980s. It was therefore often the members of the Italian-American "street crews" who were particularly open to such risky business and who, against the will of the bosses, did not leave the business to the Sicilians alone.
history
precursor
The Sicilian mafia had been pushed to the brink of the abyss during Mussolini's dictatorship and until 1943 had hardly any relations with the Italian-American mafia. However, connections had already been re-established through Italian-American GIs during the Second World War. When the demand for hard drugs, especially heroin, rose sharply in the USA after the war, but the East Coast clans often shied away from direct involvement in the drug trade for the reasons mentioned, the first business connections between America and Italy soon developed.
From October 10th to 14th 1957, probably organized by Joseph Bonanno , a summit meeting between the Sicilian and American mafiosi took place in the Grand Hotel des Palmes and in the Spano restaurant in Palermo . Participants were leading bosses from both the American and the Sicilian organizations. Agreements were made to start the largest heroin drug trafficking in history. In order to effectively avoid disputes in the future and to resolve them through negotiations, the “ Sicilian Mafia Commission ”, also called “Cupola” (Italian: dome) , was now formed from twelve members in Palermo, as in the USA Salvatore Greco , who was highly respected in Cosa Nostra, took over, and not one of the LaBarbera brothers favored by Lucky Luciano (see Cosa Nostra: Structure ).
As a result of the meeting, the Sicilians were allowed to distribute the drugs they had supplied in the USA against payment of a percentage tax to the Italian-American bosses. The American Mafiosi were banned from drug trafficking to avoid the attention of the criminal authorities. However, Vito Genovese , Carmine Galante, and other American bullies failed to adhere to this agreement because the drug trade generated huge profit margins.
In the 1960s and 1970s, it was initially the French Connection , in which the heroin smuggling organized by the Sicilian Mafia into the USA took place via the French stopover in Marseille .
Structure of the logistics
After the meeting in Palermo in 1957, the Sicilians began to build the infrastructure for the drug trafficking in heroin left to them. At the beginning of the 1960s, the American Cosa Nostra smuggled Sicilian criminals into the country. These began to work in pizzerias ; They did this for years without engaging in illegal activities, only to be active in another area behind the legal facade. All of this was made easier by the fact that pizza quickly enjoyed great popularity in the United States after 1945.
Most of these pizzerias also served as heroin distribution points. Since the pizzerias had to be supplied with ingredients such as tomatoes , cheese and other Italian export goods , in addition to the additional legal source of income, there was an opportunity to smuggle the heroin from Sicily into the USA. In addition, the legal façade of the pizzerias served as an ideal opportunity to launder the funds raised by the heroin trade . This is how the name Pizza Connection came about . Only John Gambino , a member of the Gambino family and the cousin of the Sicilian boss Salvatore Inzerillo , was the owner of 240 pizzerias, which were distributed over the entire United States. In the northeastern United States, the Cosa Nostra controlled more than 80 percent of drug trafficking through the Pizza Connection alone.
1970s and 1980s
In the 1970s and 1980s in particular, the Pizza Connection developed into a highly profitable business, with the well-organized Sicilian Cosa Nostra making several hundred million dollars each year and gaining more and more influence in the United States. Americans viewed this with some unease and fear. However, there was no way to prevent the spread of the "Zips", as the Sicilians were called by the American bullies . The Americans were also quite divided; some bosses kept a somewhat aloof relationship, others worked very closely with the Sicilians.
Carmine Galante , boss of the Bonanno family, kept a Sicilian bodyguard consisting of several members and took many Sicilian mafiosi into his family. Galante thought the Sicilians were more reliable and capable than his compatriots. Like many others, Galante defied the ban of the American Mafia Commission to trade in heroin; however, he did so to an exorbitant extent. The FBI agent Joseph Pistone , the undercover as " Donnie Brasco " in the Bonanno crime family as undercover determined reported how distressed Americans were when Galante two Sicilians to Captains appointed. The American captains feared an acute loss of power and complained:
"... about the growing power of the Sicilians, who were viewed with a mixture of disdain and great fear."
Pistone also reported the ambivalent relationship between the Americans and the Sicilians to the FBI and described the impressions that the Sicilians left with the simple " soldiers ":
“He said the“ zips ”were Sicilians who had been brought into the country to sell heroin and murder assignments for Carmine“ Lilo ”Gigante.
They were housed in pizzerias, where they got heroin delivered and distributed, laundered money and waited for further orders from Galante. ... he said the "zips" were a conspiratorial and closed clique. ... They are, he said, the most unscrupulous killers there is in the business. "
Galante kept the profits to himself and used them to expand his power. The other New York bosses like Paul Castellano , head of the powerful Gambino family or "Fat Tony" Salerno , were increasingly concerned about Galante's will to power and his refusal to share the profits with the Commission. The Sicilian criminals, who expected a larger share of the profits, were also dissatisfied. An interest group for the murder of Galante was formed from this.
Carmine Galante was on 12 July 1979 by his Sicilian bodyguard shot and a Sicilian became head of the Bonanno crime family for the next two years. The chairman of the US commission, Paul Castellano , soon met with leading Sicilian drug traffickers Salvatore Catalano and Giuseppe Ganci to negotiate a larger share of the heroin trade for the commission. In the mid-1980s, the "Pizza Connection" was broken up by the authorities.
process
In 1986 a trial began in the USA against a total of 22 defendants (so-called "monster trial ") who were supposed to belong to this drug ring. The name "Pizza Connection" only became popular with the media coverage. The former mafia boss Gaetano Badalamenti from Cinisi near Palermo in Sicily was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
"It is a tremendous victory in the effort to crush the Mafia"
"It is an immense success in our project to smash the Mafia."
consequences
Murders and Arrest Warrants
Virtually all of the key Italians involved in uncovering the Pizza Connection case have been murdered over time:
The then attorney general Rocco Chinnici was murdered in 1983.
Beppe Montana was a Sicilian police officer and head of the police force in Palermo responsible for arresting wanted Mafia members. Together with several police colleagues, he led the investigation into the Pizza Connection case . He was murdered on July 28, 1985. A few days later, on August 6, 1985, his work colleagues Roberto Antiochia and Antonino Cassarà were also murdered. The injured Natale Mondo was finally murdered on January 14, 1988.
They worked closely with the examining magistrates at the time Giovanni Falcone († 1992) and Paolo Borsellino († 1992).
Italian also exist for all Sicilian condemned the US process arrest warrants . In May 2009, the Italian authorities waited at Roma Fiumicino airport for the arrival of Rosario Gambino , for whom Giovanni Falcone himself had ordered the arrest 29 years ago . Gambino is still in the US as his lawyers were able to stop the extradition at the last moment. Rosario is in the custody of the US Migration Agency. In a 1986 model trial in Palermo, Gambino was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment in absentia.
Operation "Old Bridge"
Gambino is a key figure in the Pizza Connection; he probably still has information such as B. regarding financial transactions and the stations of money laundering. These as yet unknown transactions have come back into the crosshairs of the investigation, since 2008 Italian and US investigators in Operation Old Bridge arrested around 90 people who regularly traveled between Palermo and New York City.
In Italy alone, around 300 emergency services are said to have been involved in the action, 20–30 people from the environment of Salvatore Lo Piccolo , who was arrested a week before the action. Leading members of the Inzerillo, Mannino, DiMaggio and Gambino families, including the new alleged head, Francesco Paolo Augusto Cali, were arrested . 62 people were arrested in Brooklyn and Cherry Hill , New York . Cali is said to have run a network of food producing and selling companies that allegedly served the Cali Gambino Inzerillo clan as a cover for drug and other black market trafficking.
New pizza connection
The arrests of Old Bridge were preceded by a two-year investigation by the Italian police and the FBI . Apparently, since the arrest of the Capi di tutti i capi Totò Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, a new alliance has existed between the Italian and American families of the Mafia.
The New York Prosecutor's Office, headed by Prosecutor Benton Campbell , filed a 170-page lawsuit against those arrested, charged with murder, extortion, usury of credit, conspiracy and drug trafficking. The charges are against the leadership of the Gambino family .
Films and documentaries
- 2005: The Mafia - the four-part documentary ; 4-part documentary about the Mafia in America and Italy (episode 2/4)
- 1985: Pizza Connection ; Film about the Pizza Connection
literature
- Ralph Blumenthal: Last Days of the Sicilians , Crown Publishing 1988, ISBN 0-8129-1594-1
- Shana Alexander:
- Pizza connection. The trial against the drug mafia , 1992 Bastei-Lübbe , ISBN 3404603184 , (OT: Pizza Connection: Lawyers, Money, Drugs, Mafia 1989 DIANE Publishing Company, ISBN 1555840272 )
- Pizza connection. the fight against the drug mafia. , 1989 Munich, List Verlag, ISBN 3471770186
- Alexander Stille : Excellent Cadavers: Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic , 1995 Vintage, ISBN 9780099594918
Web links
- Gaetano Badalamenti And The Pizza Connection , article on americanmafia.com (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ John Dickie: Cosa nostra: The history of the mafia. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2006, ISBN 978-3-596-17106-4 .
- ↑ Alexander Stille: The Judges: Death, the Mafia and the Italian Republic. CH Beck, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-406-42303-5 .
- ↑ Claire Sterling: The Mafia. Scherz Verlag, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-502-17700-7 .
- ↑ Wshington Post: "18 Guilty in 'Pizza Connection' Trial; Case Called Major Victory in US Assault on Organized Crime. ”March 3, 1987
- ↑ a b c Mafia boss keeps secrets of the “Pizza Connection” on www.tagesanzeiger.ch from May 22, 2009
- ↑ Mafia, 90 Arresti tra Palermo e Stati Uniti of 8 February 2008 on www.corriere.it (Italian)
- ↑ Decine di arresti a Palermo e New York Presi i boss del nuovo patto Italia-Usa by ATTILIO BOLZONI on www.repubblica.it (Italian)
- ↑ a b c strike against "Pizza-Connection" at www.orf.at from July 24, 2009