Charges stayed against dozens in Mafia bust cases
Thirty-five people accused of such serious crimes as kidnapping and drug trafficking saw the cases brought against them in a major RCMP investigation into the Montreal Mafia dropped on Tuesday because the Crown no longer wants to prosecute them.
The Crown’s sudden change of stance in an investigation dubbed Project Clemenza means there are only 11 accused left with cases pending after three series of arrests made between 2014 and 2016. Federal prosecutor Sabrina DelliFraine informed Quebec Court Judge Lori Renée Weitzman of the Crown’s position during a hearing at the Montreal courthouse.
Included among the people who no longer face any charges is Liborio Cuntrera, 48, of Laval, a man alleged to be one of the current leaders in the Montreal Mafia. Cuntrera’s father, Agostino, was murdered in St-Léonard in 2010 when the Rizzuto organization was under attack. Last year, Cuntrera was charged with trafficking in cocaine on May 17, 2011. Another two charges that were stayed on Tuesday alleged that he and Marco Pizzi, 47, of Montreal North, conspired to traffic in cocaine during a nine-day period in 2011.
Pizzi faces charges in another indictment filed in Project Clemenza and he is one of the 11 accused who still have charges pending.
The Crown’s decision also put an end to a case where eight men faced charges related to the kidnapping and extortion of a man named Peter Whitmore, who was held against his will for a few months early in 2011. The RCMP alleged, in 2014, that two brothers, Roberto and Antonio Bastone, were behind the kidnapping because Whitmore owed them more than $2 million. All charges the brothers faced in Clemenza were stayed on Tuesday.
“What happened is the Crown decided to place a stay of proceedings on (the cases of ) 36 accused (including Ali Awada, who was killed this year). It was a decision made after considering many factors,” Delli-Fraine told reporters after the hearing. She noted that a Supreme Court of Canada decision made last summer, limiting at 30 months the delay an accused should expect to have a Superior Court trial, was one factor. “But also because this case is bringing about unprecedented legal questions. There have been disclosure requests that were made regarding certain elements (of the investigation). It is taking longer than expected to answer these requests.”
One of those elements appears to involve how the RCMP does not want to disclose how it intercepted messages from suspects exchanged over smartphones during the investigation.
During Tuesday’s hearing, defence attorney Dominique Shoofey told Weitzman he does not want to debate further on an issue that was already decided on by a Superior Court judge in 2015. It was an apparent reference to a decision made by Superior Court Justice Michael Stober, on Nov. 18, 2015, in a related case. In that decision, Stober ordered that the Crown disclose evidence to defence lawyers on how the RCMP intercepted communication sent between suspects who used BlackBerrys to send what they assumed were encrypted messages.
The RCMP used a mobile device identifier and Stober ordered that the Crown disclose information like the device’s signal strength and its potential impact on a BlackBerry’s ability to make or receive phone calls while text messages are being intercepted from it.
Last year, the Crown did an about face in a murder trial and six men who were about to go on trial for the first-degree murder of Mafioso Salvatore Montagna were able to plead guilty to the lesser charge of conspiracy to commit murder. The change in stance came as Stober’s decision was about to be brought before the Supreme Court of Canada.
The 11 people who remain accused in Project Clemenza will have a hearing date in May.