Lengthy mob case ‘finished’
Drug-trafficking probe ends with charges stayed
• A lengthy investigation into drugtrafficking networks came to a screeching halt Monday as the last 11 people accused in a massive Quebec mob bust dubbed Project Clemenza saw the charges against them stayed.
A spokesperson for the Public Prosecution Service of Canada said a stay of proceedings was a discretionary decision by the Crown and was the only possible move.
In March, the federal Crown used its discretion in a similar fashion to have charges stayed against 36 people arrested in Clemenza.
“Project Clemenza is now finished,” prosecutor Andre Albert Morin said.
Morin told reporters the Crown asked for Monday’s stay of proceedings after speaking to investigators in the RCMP-led case and concluding it wouldn’t be able to provide answers to pointed technical questions from the defence.
At the time of the first wave of arrests, the RCMP proudly boasted about an investigative tactic that saw more than one million private PIN-to-PIN BlackBerry messages intercepted between 2010 and 2012 and analyzed.
Prosecutor Marie-Michelle Meloche told Postmedia News the decision to request the stay of proceedings on Monday was based on complicated demands from the defence involving the disclosure of all evidence gathered by the RCMP during the investigation.
She said the Crown would not have been able to satisfy the requests made by the defence without a delay — but that would be rejected by the courts.
“The request for disclosure from the defence raised very complex issues and, despite all the efforts, the prosecution was not in a position to meet its disclosure obligations,” the Public Prosecution Service wrote in an email.
The accused were among those charged in a major police operation targeting organized crime between 2014 and 2016 that led to dozens of arrests.
Included among the men who essentially saw their cases tossed out at the courthouse was Marco Pizzi, 47, a Montreal resident alleged to be an influential figure in the Montreal Mafia who was the target of an attempted murder last year.
Another man who walked away clear of drug-smuggling and conspiracy charges was Antonio Ciavaglia, 58, a businessman who used to own a cargo company based in Montreal’s LaSalle borough.
Franco Albanese, 50, another resident of the suburb of Kirkland, saw a stay of proceedings placed on the four charges he faced.
Quebec court Judge Flavia Longo agreed with the Crown’s request during a very brief hearing at the Montreal courthouse. All 11 of the men had been released on bail shortly after they were charged in May last year.
Besides having been charged with drug smuggling in Project Clemenza, police have alleged in the past that Pizzi was involved in drug trafficking in eastern Montreal. A conflict between members of a street gang and drug dealers with alleged ties to Pizzi is believed to have been what was behind an attempt on his life last summer.