High-level arrests reveal vast gangland conspiracy
Quebec police say Mafia, bikers and street gangs in alliance
For Quebec police it was an incredible catch — three of the biggest fish in the sea — as officers announced the arrest of suspected leaders of the three most significant criminal entities in the province: the Mafia, the Hells Angels and a coalition of street gangs.
Each arrest would be significant as a singular event, but Thursday’s allegations of the syndicates working together — variously controlling Montreal’s drug trade and plotting murder — make the probe of national significance, suggesting Montreal filled the void after the death of Vito Rizzuto, who reigned as the most powerful and influential gangster Canada has seen.
Police announcements like numbers, and this one has its share: 48 people arrested and $1.2 million in cash, seven kilos of cocaine, 41 weapons and one Harley Davidson motorcycle seized by 200 officers after three years of investigation.
But it is the names not the numbers that matter.
Each name brings a pedigree and each charge a stunning accusation of underworld intrigue.
The pattern of co-operation between the organizations signified “an alliance,” said Sûreté du Québec Chief Inspector Patrick Belanger, “born out of a desire to control territory, particularly drug trafficking … and to share revenues.”
He revealed a common truth about organized crime: money, not love, conquers all.
As police spoke, names and photographs connected by lines and arrows were revealed.
Sharing the top spot was Leonardo Rizzuto, 46, the sole living son of Vito, who publicly protested any involvement in crime.
Thursday, however, he was named as serving, alongside another arrested man, Stefano Sollecito, as one of the new leaders of the old Mafia. Sollecito, 48, is the son of Rocco Sollecito, one of the core leaders of Vito’s organization.
Gregory Woolley, 43, once a righthand man to former Hells Angels boss Maurice “Mom” Boucher, was named as the unifying figure who drew street gangs together and connected them to the more senior criminal groups.
Salvatore Cazzetta, 60, now a leading Hells Angel, although once their sworn enemy, was also charged, accused of distilling proceeds and street taxes.
Even Boucher, 62, the former incendiary Hells Angels leader now serving life in prison after leading the biker war 20 years ago that caused 150 deaths, was charged in the operation. He was arrested in prison and accused of plotting to kill Raynald Desjardins, a mobster who himself is in prison for a plot to kill a mobster from New York.
And smack in the centre of the police chart was the singularly unsmiling face of Loris Cavalière, 61, a practising Montreal lawyer who for years has represented the Rizzuto family and other major criminal players. Police called him the “facilitator” between alliance members.
Police said Cavalière hosted regular meetings at his law office, attempting to bring the legal privilege of confidentiality to the talk. He is charged with “participating or contributing to the activity of a criminal organization.”
Rizzuto looks increasingly like his father, Vito, who died in 2013, and his last name carries the weight of his organization, the likes of which Canada had never seen.
Police frequently kept an eye on Vito’s children, particularly his sons, Leonardo and Nicolo (two years older), because of a Sicilian Mafia tradition of male heirs often moving into the family business.
And while Nicolo obviously fit that mould — physically more powerful, more hands-on on the street and meeting directly with criminals — Leonardo followed a quieter path.
A smart, well-groomed man, he attended the University of Ottawa law school and was called to the Quebec bar in 1999, the same year he married a chartered accountant.
He worked in the Montreal law office of Cavalière.
In 1997, Rizzuto was beaten by a tough biker, Donald Magnussen, in an apparent case of mistaken identity. Even after apologizing Magnussen was terrified. A year later, his body was found in the St. Lawrence River.
In 2006, Rizzuto sued the National Post and this author for nearly $1 million, alleging he was portrayed as a mobster in the reporter’s book, The Sixth Family. The lawsuit was withdrawn by Leonardo years later.
The book alleged Vito had a special “Lawyers’ Branch” within his Mafia organization and police tracked 11 lawyers in Quebec and one in Ontario.
In 2007, Rizzuto sat in a New York courtroom supporting his father as Vito pleaded guilty to three gangland murders back in 1981.
“Whatever is required we will do as a family for my father,” he told the Post then.
Cavalière had also long fallen under suspicion by authorities, and he knew it.
In 2014, a U.S. prosecutor directly called him the “house counsel” for the Montreal Mafia and Vito’s “personal attorney.” Cavalière denied being a criminal.
“Are they saying I’m part of the Rizzuto family?” Cavaliere told the Post last year. “Whatever link they’re trying to make is a crock of shit.”
That brash approach distinguished him from many lawyers.
Whether police have finally penetrated a legal veil of secrecy thrown over a criminal alliance will be revealed in court, but, for now, the impressive names and colourful history must suffice.
The allegations of an alliance suggest something else, said Pierre de Champlain, a former RCMP intelligence analyst and an author on organized crime.
The Mafia in Montreal isn’t what it used to be.
“It is clear that the Montreal Mafia has not found yet its leader that makes consensus with everyone, like Vito did,” said de Champlain.
In the old days, the Mafia did not sit as equals. The Mafia sat at the head of the table and invited others to join them.
“The Mafia does not sit with other criminal organizations. The Mafia supervises,” he said.