Montreal mob adviser agrees to deportation

MONTREAL — Bakery owner, Mafia consigliere and convicted murderer Moreno Gallo has agreed to be deported to Italy as rivals seek to kill him.

His lawyer says Gallo, 66, would rather live in Europe than face assassination in Montreal as members of the Rizzuto clan are knocked off one by one.

Gallo came to Canada in the 1950s when he was a young boy but never obtained citizenship.

“He understood that if he had stayed here, he would have been vulnerable,” his lawyer, Stephen Fineberg, told reporters. “He chose to live in total freedom overseas.”

Gallo was flanked by two border agents Wednesday as he boarded a plane for Europe at Trudeau Airport. His wife plans to join him after she hands over control of their popular family bakery in Montreal’s north-end Little Italy neighbourhood.

In a statement on Thursday, the Canada Border Services Agency described Gallo as “a 66-year-old man associated with Montreal organized crime” who had been “found guilty of many infractions, including a premeditated murder and an active i mplication in organized crime.”

Gallo,

from

Italy’s southern

Stephen Fineberg, lawyer Calabria region, worked with the Rizzuto crime family after an earlier affiliation with the Cotroni clan. He had been under lifetime parole conditions for the 1973 murder of a drug dealer, a crime for which he served several years in prison.

Sources tell QMI Agency that the Calabrian gangster was advising the Rizzutos as the family regroups amid a purge likely orchestrated by rivals.

Several top members of the family have been killed in the past t wo years, including patriarch Nick Rizzuto Sr. and his grandson, Nick Jr.

Federal officials suspended Gallo’s parole i n November and he returned to prison. Police officers told him his life was in danger.

“That’s when he changed his mind and chose voluntary deportation, to enjoy his remaining years,” Fineberg said.

— QMI Agency