Cosa Nostra News

SOURCE Liborio "Pancho" Cuntrera -- having returned from his Italian vacation -- is due to appear at the Montreal courthouse this afternoon, The Montreal Gazette just reported . Cuntrera, 47, of Laval, faces three charges related to Project Clemenza, an investigation into cocaine trafficking and smuggling. Cuntrera was in Italy when the RCMP was conducting arrests. "Pancho" was arrested yesterday, while in the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport. He was taken directly into custody the moment he stepped off the plan. His first court appearance is this afternoon (Monday, May 6, 2016.) Cuntrera was one of the six men who sat on the Montreal Mafia's ruling panel, which also included Leonardo Rizzuto and Stefano Sollecito, both arrested last November .

Raynald Desjardins in no hurry. Raynald Desjardins appears to have nothing left to lose, to paraphrase the Montreal Gazette. The 62-year-old former trusted lieutenant of the Rizzuto organization last week told a Quebec Superior Court judge that he is willing to wait for a period that could ultimately last longer than a year for his sentencing hearing. This follows Desjardins guilty plea to conspiracy for the November 2011 murder of former New York-based acting Bonanno crime family boss Salvatore Montagna . Desjardins, an influential organized crime figure who used to be a right-hand man to Montreal mob boss Vito Rizzuto , pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge on July 6, 2015..

Vince Cassel may have thought he was joking.  The Italian voice-over industry acts like the Mafia, French actor Vincent Cassel said. Now, he's probably using hyperbole to draw attention to an issue that annoys him. I am not for one minute suggesting what he said is true! Not at all..... But if one considers what he says in light of what we know about the mob's infiltration of labor, then the Italian film dubbing industry is actually the perfect example of how the Mafia takes over entire industries by controlling the labor force via unions. Still, I am not saying this is the case. Not at all. Consider this an educational exercise -- and that only. I mean nothing more or less.... 

The Gigliottis, husband and wife, was the U.S. connection between the Ndrangheta and South American drug cartels. A savage freelancing mobster arrested in New York for his part in a transcontinental cocaine trafficking network boasted to his wife that he ate the heart and kidney of a rival who owed him money, it is alleged . Gregorio Gigliotti was the U.S. broker between the Ndrangheta , considered Italy's richest and most brutal organized crime syndicate, and the South American drug cartels. Despite reports to the contrary, it doesn't appear the New York families are directly implicated in this case. Longtime Calabria-based anti-Mafia prosecutor Nicola Gratteri said the 'ndrangheta has for some time been beefing up its presence in the United States: "In New York, right under the Brooklyn Bridge."

Vito Rizzuto drove around the streets of Montreal  in an armored car  and brazenly sent his assassins across the world to kill those who defied him. The Godfather of Montreal, Vito Rizzuto, died one year ago of complications from lung cancer. In this group count traitors and Calabrian mobsters from Toronto. Vito's bloody street war to annihilate any and all rivals and defectors didn't end with his death in December 2013. So said a law enforcement source quoted in the Toronto Sun , which further noted that Rizzuto's death last December at age 67 failed to "stem the vendetta." The Rizzuto crime family still has some “Calabrian Mob opportunists and Sicilian traitors” that it needs to deal with, the source said. Although Rizzuto was challenged, he retained his power. “The ground was never lost,” the source said. On Dec. 1, after months of relative peace within Montreal’s Mafia circles, one of its Calabrian members was fatally shot in a restaur...

Old time Ndrangheta boss Antonio Macri.  The Calabrian Mafia is ramping up illegal activity in Switzerland . Which says a lot, considering they have been operating in the Thurgau state of Switzerland for the past 40 years, with alleged involvement in cocaine, weapons dealing, extortion and trafficking. A video shot near Zurich from a hidden-camera was released after police arrested 16 people in Italy, two of whom live in Frauenfeld, the capital of the member state of Thurgau in Switzerland. The Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s Office is now expecting extradition requests from the Italian authorities.

Mafia violence is on the wane. The Italian mafia is on the march, infiltrating new sectors of the country's economy, according to a new report. Newspaper articles have been seeking to offset this news with word that the Mafia has been keeping a lid on violence -- as if taking a page from its American brethren, which no longer sanctions murder. The report, by the government’s anti-mafia directorate (the Dia), adds that while Sicily’s Cosa Nostra faces a troublesome ongoing restructuring and the Naples-based Camorra is getting major attention from law enforcement, the Calabrian Ndrangheta has consolidated its position as the most powerful criminal organization in all of Italy, if not the world.

La Cicciolina, sans exposed breasts. The following was written by Charles DeLucca , our itinerant journalist, who occasionally files reports with Cosa Nostra News based on his observations and thoughts regarding organized crime, Italian-style, in all its various guises and locals. Most of the time, when I mention I am of Italian nationality, people ask me about every single issue relating to Italy. From Berlusconi to La Cicciolina (a Hungarian-born Italian porn star, politician and singer, famous for delivering political speeches with her breasts exposed). They also ask my about the dynamics of organized crime. Certain topics are off limits because it’s really, really difficult to explain the truth about certain groups. For instance, most of what we know about the American Cosa Nostra is from the movies, TV and pentitis (plural for “those who repent”; rats, turncoats, in other words). Nobody knew much about la Camorra until Robert Saviano published Gomorrah ...