The Sixth Family

by Lamothe, Lee

  It was the start of an odd pattern. Several other men, most with links to the underworld, were kidnapped for a short period of time—ranging from hours to weeks—before being released. One man, Nicola Varacalli, the father of a Montreal night club owner, Mario Varacalli, was grabbed from his Montreal home on Halloween night in 2005 by four men who knocked on his door wearing costumes to hide their faces. His kidnappers allowed him to make several telephone calls to associates, imploring them that they “must stop the junk on the street.” On December 8, Varacalli, who has cocaine convictions, contacted police through a lawyer; like Martorana, he was no longer being held against his will but was uninterested in pursuing the matter with the authorities.

  As disturbing as Varacalli’s kidnapping might have been to those who knew him, it was only a symptom of a greater problem facing the Sixth Family, part of a growing dispute with the D’Amico clan from Granby, about an hour’s drive east of Montreal. The D’Amico organization, which felt wronged by Arcadi, presented a rare display of open defiance towards the Sixth Family’s hegemony. On December 1, 2005, Luca D’Amico arrived at the Club Social Consenza to deliver a letter addressed to “Uncle Cola,” an anglicized version of a common nickname for Nick. The letter presented to the Rizzuto patriarch the D’Amicos’ side of the dispute. It sought a negotiated settlement that only Nick could arrange, the letter said. The D’Amicos did not appear to have faith in Arcadi handling this matter. Nick needed a little more prodding to get involved and the D’Amicos soon offered a bold show of strength.

  On December 23, Luca D’Amico and two colleagues walked into the Consenza, paused for a moment and then left, with D’Amico signaling with his right hand as he walked out. A cavalcade of vehicles then pulled up to collect the trio and the procession of eight SUVs and Mercedes cars accompanied the visitors away from the Sixth Family headquarters. What could have happened, had the intent been directly hostile rather than a display of strength and determination, was not lost on the Sixth Family bosses. Arcadi quickly phoned his colleagues, warning them to be careful, saying: “The insane guy is in the neighborhood.” Arcadi was clearly spooked by the D’Amicos’ obstinacy and was seen carrying a pistol on his right hip.

  Other actions on the street while Vito was indisposed had grimmer results—Montreal police were dealing with a string of unsolved slayings with underworld links.

  “Now that Vito’s not running the show, all of the guys who are owed money or who had scores to settle but were held in check are free to act,” said André Bouchard, the former commander of Montreal police’s Major Crimes Unit. “If Vito told them they were not going to get paid, they weren’t going to get paid and they had to accept that. But now he isn’t here and they are saying, ‘Fuck him, I want my money.’ There is a lot of unrest right now. When Vito Rizzuto was on the streets, everyone paid attention to him. Now that Vito isn’t on the street, nobody is afraid any more. There have been three or four hits recently. I don’t think in normal times that these guys would have been taken out. This would never have happened when Vito was around.”

  Indeed, several experienced underworld figures in Montreal said that, before his arrest, Vito Rizzuto often played the role of mediator to others in the underworld, whether they were involved with the bikers, the Mafia, the Irish gangs or were independent operators. Everyone seemed to feel they were under some obligation to listen to Vito.

  “They help to resolve disputes. They keep the peace,” an underworld source said of the Sixth Family’s leadership. “You need that. Mind you, someone gets fucked out of money each time but you can’t go to court so there isn’t much option. The option is to shoot it out and be ostracized by everyone else. No one ever wants to go to a meeting [with Vito] because you know you’re going to get fucked out of your money.”

  The meetings were often quick and casual, a far cry from how such sit-downs are portrayed in popular culture, an underworld source said. Those involved often do not even sit down.

  “People can’t be seen meeting together—especially someone like Vito. Some people don’t want to be seen meeting with Vito and Vito doesn’t want to be seen meeting with a lot of people. It draws heat for both of them,” the source said. “When they talk about having a meeting or a sit-down, it isn’t like in the movies—a big powwow at a table in a darkened basement or in a private room at a restaurant. Mostly, they would arrange a meeting in the Pharma Plus [a large drug-store chain] or some other public place; it’s arranged so that the guy Vito’s meeting with just happens to be walking down the same aisle at the same time as Vito is. He gets a one-minute talking-to and then Vito moves on down the aisle.” To anyone watching, it appears to be a chance meeting of little consequence and, for police, there was little chance of hearing the chat.

  Vito had the authority to listen to both sides of a dispute and pass judgment; he could tell someone he had to pay a fine or someone else that he was to wipe a debt off his books without payment, the underworld source said. Since most criminals took heed of Vito’s pronouncements, it was an effective way to settle disputes without bloodshed.

  “It’s a culture of bullshit and as long as you believe in it, it works,” a gangster said. With Vito removed from the streets there were fewer and fewer believers.

  ROME, FEBRUARY 2005

  In Italy—particularly in the south—government contracts offer a steady source of income for the Mafia. During large construction projects, Sicily’s Mafia is an invisible but ubiquitous partner. The plundering begins even before a project’s conception, through the accumulation of land. It quickly ramps up into the labor and construction fields, security for work sites, provision of organized labor and heavy machinery, payments to acquire permits and, finally, a piece of the management of the completed project and perhaps a share of the profits from it. Politicians and mafiosi have long divided this revenue between them.

  In Calabria and in Sicily, organized crime groups are so pervasive in building and development activities that many companies in the north—where Italy’s financial sectors lie—try to avoid doing business there. Firms that do undertake projects budget vast sums for extortion payments and bribes. Traditionally, those that failed to accommodate the Sicilian Mafia or the ’Ndrangheta in Calabria have been beset by endless “bad luck” with their projects: executives have been kidnapped, trucks and machinery damaged, destroyed or stolen, permits and licenses delayed and labor problems not resolved.

  Between the two mob strongholds of Sicily and Calabria is the Strait of Messina, a stretch of water two and a quarter miles wide. Vehicles and trains cross it by ferry and, during holidays, lineups can last more than 10 hours as vehicles wait for a spot on the vessels. A bridge-link from Sicily to the mainland has been dreamed about and argued over for more than a century but it was only in the past 25 years that serious study was undertaken. Supporters believe it will open the door to development on the relatively poor island of Sicily. Opponents point to the region’s history of active volcanoes, the anticipated environmental damage and dangerously high winds as reason to scratch the plan. Then there is the cost, estimated at about $6 billion. Setting aside the ancient legend of a sea monster living in the strait, all sides of the bridge debate were keenly aware of another beast waiting to feast on the huge public contract to build such an immense structure: the Mafia.

  With the Sicilian Mafia based at one end of the proposed bridge and the ’Ndrangheta at the other, it was impossible to expect organized crime not to try to claim a significant portion of what promised to be the largest public-works project in Southern Italy’s history. As such, when the government announced in 2002 that it would proceed with the ambitious eight-lane suspension bridge, a special task force was established to root out any Mafia involvement.

  On February 11, 2005, news that surprised no one finally broke: government investigators said they had uncovered a plot by organized crime to control the consortium selected to build and maintain the bridge. At a press conference in Rome, senior officers with the Dir
ezione Investigativa Antimafia, the federal force targeting organized crime, announced the arrest of a wealthy construction engineer and the issuing of arrest warrants against four other men accused of trying to infiltrate the bidding process.

  The DIA then managed to elicit surprise: at the head of the criminal consortium, officials announced, was Vito Rizzuto.

  Arrested at his home in Rome hours before the announcement was Giuseppe “Joseph” Zappia, born in 1925 in Marseilles, to parents originally from Calabria. Zappia had earlier moved to Canada and is best remembered as the controversial contractor responsible for building the Olympic Village in Montreal for the 1976 Summer Olympic Games. The job was mired in scandal: in 1988, he was cleared of fraud charges related to the work only after two key witnesses died. Zappia then shuttled between Canada and the Middle East—where he was involved in several large development projects—before settling in Rome in 1997. In 2001, he bragged that he had formed a friendship with Silvio Berlusconi, then the Italian prime minister. At the press conference announcing Zappia’s arrest and the arrest warrants against Vito and three business associates, a police spokesman said Zappia had established a construction company called Zappia International that was used as a front for Vito’s bid to build the bridge.

  “Vito Rizzuto tried to participate in the tender for the construction of the Messina Bridge between Sicily and Calabria. Of course, Rizzuto himself cannot come here to Italy and say ‘OK, I’d like to build the Messina Bridge’,” said Silvia Franzè, a chief superintendent with the DIA. “In Italy, everybody knows of the Rizzuto Family. And so according to our legislation, a Mafia family cannot participate in a public tender to get a public works contract. Even if he doesn’t have a charge in Italy, everybody in Italy knows that he is connected with Caruana-Cuntrera and so on and so on. We know in Italy who Vito Rizzuto is.”

  To help Vito in his bid to profit from the bridge project, he turned to his old friend Zappia, police say.

  “Zappia was the president of a company that asked to participate in the tender and he had a lot of meetings with people to have this public work, it is a huge public work. He was the clear face of the Rizzuto Family,” said Franzè. A confidential Canadian police report on the investigation says that Vito and Zappia have known each other since the 1970s and that Zappia was well aware of police interest in Vito. That was why he tried to limit direct contact between them, preferring instead to deal with intermediaries.

  “Vito Rizzuto and Zappia spoke together directly only twice,” said Franzè. One of those chats came on November 1, 2002.

  “Everything is going smoothly. All the plans have been accepted,” Zappia said, according to a transcript of the conversation.

  “So we have a good chance, no?” Vito responded.

  “Not only a good chance, but a guarantee as well.”

  “Good, good,” Vito said.

  Most of the dealings documented by police, however, came through three intermediaries who looked out for Vito’s interests, Italian court documents say.

  Filippo Ranieri, born in Montreal in 1937, was a business consultant and described by police in Italy as “a broker.” Canadian police describe him as a longtime associate of Vito’s. Italian police say Ranieri was the main liaison between Vito and Zappia. Hakim Hammoudi, born in Algeria in 1963 and dividing his time between Paris and Montreal, was another business consultant whose name appears on a confidential Canadian police chart listing Vito’s associates. Both Ranieri and Hammoudi dealt with Zappia by phone, fax and in person. A police report alleges that both men met with Zappia in Rome several times during the course of the bridge bidding process. Also involved, the authorities announced, was Sivalingam Sivabavanandan, born in 1953, a Sri Lankan businessman living in London, England, who goes by the nickname “Bavan.” Both Sivabavanandan and Hammoudi were accused of helping Vito invest his vast wealth.

  “They were two businessmen, the guys who kept the contacts with the bank to find others who wanted to put money to invest. They were following all of the economic interests of Vito Rizzuto. They were brokers working for Vito Rizzuto. The Messina Bridge was only one of the investments that Vito Rizzuto was involved in,” said Franzè. Hammoudi and Zappia were working on ventures in Algeria, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that promised to provide Vito a substantial profit that was, in turn, to be reinvested in a large oil venture based in London, England, according to authorities. The Italian government is working to trace some of that money and investigators asked the Swiss to again look into the family’s banking records.

  Prosecutor Adriano Iasillo in Rome charged that the group had more than $6 billion ready to invest in the project.

  The probe began in October 2002 and investigators said the illicit consortium submitted a preliminary tender, regarding technical qualifications, two years later. It had already invested more than $4.3 million in the proposal, authorities estimated. At the time of the arrest announcement, police executed search warrants in several European cities and gathered a mountain of documents. The centerpiece of the government’s evidence is hundreds of wiretap conversations, some made in Canada and some in Italy, including one in which a conspirator says that, if all goes well, they will be able to build the bridge on behalf of a friend—whom investigators say is Vito—and then handle the accounting necessary to satisfy both “the Mafia and ’Ndrangheta.”

  Arrest warrants were issued in Italy against Vito, Ranieri, Hammoudi and Sivabavanandan. Soon after, Sivabavanandan was arrested in France and extradited to Italy. He was sentenced to two years in jail after pleading guilty to Mafia association. He then caught a lucky break; about halfway through his sentence the Italian government, struggling with overcrowded prisons, decreed that all prisoners serving less than three years be released. On gaining his freedom, he returned to England. Italy requested Ranieri’s extradition from Canada, a request the Canadian government has declined to act on thus far, likely because he is charged only with Mafia association, which is not a crime in Canada, Italian authorities said. Hammoudi is likewise unavailable for prosecution. Neither the Italian nor the Canadian government knows precisely where he is, Franzè said.

  Meanwhile, a lawyer for Zappia said his client is innocent of the charge. He suggested that Zappia is a victim of mistaken identity, saying there is someone else with the same last name who is involved with the Rizzutos, likely a reference to Beniamino Zappia, the man who Swiss authorities say set up several of the Rizzutos’ Lugano bank accounts.

  “He says he doesn’t know Vito Rizzuto at all and is not involved in the case. We have some conversations on tape. During the trial these conversations will be produced and the judge will decide about it. We are waiting for that,” said Franzè.

  Any extradition of Vito to Italy would have to come second to the claim against him by U.S. authorities. In Italy, if convicted of being the head of a Mafia association, he could face seven years in prison.

  The sheer scale of the Sixth Family’s investment and leadership role in one of the largest public-works projects in Europe suggests the immense wealth and power resting in the hands of Vito and his organization; he had, authorities contend, found his way to the head of the mob’s most sought-after plum in the homeland of both the Sicilian Mafia and the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta—and controlled a $6-billion investment, among others.

  “Vito Rizzuto has a lot of money,” said Franzè.

  For anyone questioning the power of the Sixth Family, the allegations from the Strait of Messina Bridge, if true, are an eye-opener. The arrest warrants for Vito and the others were no doubt disturbing to the Sixth Family, but had they known how Italian authorities first caught wind of the suspicions they would have been petrified. They would not find that out, however, for another 21 months.

  “Problems are slowing them down,” a leading police Mafia investigator said of the Sixth Family’s status in 2006. “They know there have been several major investigations going on, from 1996, really, until now. A lot of intelligence has come
out and they know it. Everything has come to a standstill. The understanding is that, because of him being in jail and until the extradition thing goes through, nothing is really going to happen.”

  In the meantime, Vito Rizzuto waited behind bars.

  The empire he worked so hard to establish was fraying around the edges. His organization, at the highest levels, was the target of intense police attention and the victim of increasing underworld unrest. Vito was disappointed by his failure to win a release on bail that would have allowed him to reestablish some sense of order in an underworld left confused and unruly. His jailing prevented him from enjoying his status as one of the world’s superbosses. But, despite these setbacks on the street, he seemed to rather desperately prefer the inside of a Canadian prison over an American courtroom.