Quiet family man or fugitive from the law?
‘Mafia association’ charges make Carmelo Bruzzese a fugitive back home, but in Canada he’s a free man
The name Carmelo Bruzzese conjures two very different narratives.
The slight, white-haired 62-yearold is a husband, father and doting grandfather who, by some accounts, leads a quiet life in Woodbridge, where he’s frequently spotted at a popular Italian restaurant.
He is surrounded by the trappings of wealth and success. Until recently, he divided his time between the GTA and a villa in Calabria, Italy.
While his children have been touched by crackdowns against the Mafia, he has faced no charges here and Canadian authorities give no indication of any wrongdoing.
The portrait of a very different Carmelo Bruzzese emerges from interviews with Italian authorities, police wiretaps and prosecution documents.
One Italian judge said in a court ruling Bruzzese was “deeply embedded in Canadian and Italian organized crime.”
He has been caught on Italian police wiretaps in friendly conversations with the most powerful Mafia kingpin in Canada.
When Italian police raided his coastal villa, they found a “sophisticated” secret bunker.
His son Carlo, by birth a Canadian citizen, is currently in an Italian prison on Mafia-related charges.
His daughter is married to Antonio Coluccio, who was forced by immigration authorities to leave Canada in 2010 because of his close connections to organized crime.
Bruzzese himself is considered a “fugitive on charges of Mafia associ- ation” in Italy, associate prosecutor Nicola Gratteri, an Italian magistrate and leading Mafia investigator, told the Star in an interview.
Attempts to contact Bruzzese for an interview were unsuccessful.
Bruzzese is among about 30 Italian men in Ontario at the centre of an international dispute between Canadian and Italian authorities over allegations of Mafia affiliation.
While Italy has legislation that makes the act of Mafia membership a criminal offence, Canadian police need specific evidence of illegal acts to trigger arrests and prosecution.
That legal difference has left Bruzzese — and other Ontario men named in Italian arrest warrants — in legal limbo here in Canada.
Bruzzese can’t return to his native Italy for fear of certain arrest. But he can live a good life in Canada.
In 2009, as part of what became known as “Operazione Crimini,” Italian police secretly filmed Bruzzese and many suspected Mafia associates, and recorded them talking at a shopping mall in Siderno, Italy, as they met with Giuseppe Commisso — known as “Il Mastro” — a leader of a powerful faction of the Mafia called ’Ndrangheta.
In August of that year, Bruzzese met at least twice with Commisso, Italian prosecutors say.
Bruzzese can be heard exchanging gossip and telling Commisso about “disagreements” and messy infighting within various clans.
The wiretaps and surveillance were part of a two-year probe by Italian police that ended with the arrest and imprisonment of dozens of accused Mafia associates.
Bruzzese’s son Carlo received six years in jail for “Mafia association” in Italy. Italian authorities sentenced Commisso to 14 years and eight months. Prosecutor Gratteri says he has issued a domestic arrest warrant for Bruzzese. As early as 2004, Italian investigators had Bruzzese on wiretaps as being on a first-name basis with Vito Rizzuto, at the time widely regarded by police as the Godfather of the Canadian Mafia. The details of the wiretaps are contained in a 271-page ruling at a preliminary hearing issued by Judge Guglielmo Muntoni of the Rome Tribunal in 2008, obtained by the Star and Radio-Canada. On Jan. 15, 2004, the wiretap transcripts show that Bruzzese was chatting with Rizzuto about personal family affairs and an upcoming transaction involving an unspecified exchange. “I have it here in Toronto . . . is everything ready, if someone from there comes here,” Bruzzese tells Rizzuto just before Bruzzese is scheduled to come to Ontario. “There is no problem,” Rizzuto assures him. But there was a problem. Rizzuto was arrested five days later in his home in Montreal as part of an FBI-led sweep of the Bonanno crime family that would eventually see him sentenced to10 years in U.S. prison for his role in a murder. Within hours of Rizzuto’s detention, his top lieutenant, Francesco Arcadi, called Bruzzese, according to the wiretap transcripts. “It’s really honestly bad news,” Bruzzese responds. “I hope that everything will be resolved shortly.” He left Canada on a direct Alitalia flight from Toronto to Milan nine days later, on Jan. 29. But over the next 15 months from his home in Italy, Bruzzese kept up what Muntoni described as “continuous contacts with members of the criminal association” to get updates of Rizzuto’s ultimately fruitless battle against extradition to the U.S., according to the preliminary hearing documents. Bruzzese took time on Christmas Eve 2004 to take a call from Arcadi who was about to visit Rizzuto in jail, asking him to send the jailed Mafia leader “my best regards,” according to the wiretap transcripts presented at the Rome hearing. Bruzzese would soon have legal problems of his own to worry about.
In October 2007, as part of a massive Italian probe into Mafia money-laundering and corruption, Italian police raided what local newspapers described as Bruzzese’s “modern and luxurious villa” in Marina di Gioiosa Ionica and seized € 7 million in cash and property. The raid also turned up what Muntoni said were “bank accounts for Bruzzese in Toronto” with “cheques issued for many tens of thousands of euros per year” — more than $300,000 worth in 2005 and 2006 — according to evidence presented to the Rome court.
In addition, police found a “sophisticated hiding place for fugitives . . . cleverly concealed” behind the counter of a bar in Bruzzese’s basement, complete with a sliding wall and air filtration device, leading the judge to conclude that it was “a striking confirmation of Bruzzese’s involvement in organized crime.”
An international arrest warrant was issued for Bruzzese but was withdrawn without explanation in August 2008.
He agreed to an expedited summary hearing on the case which took place in December of that year.
Bruzzese was accused of being “part of a Mafia organization” led by Rizzuto that “planned criminal strategies in Canada and other countries” including “killings, international drug trafficking, extortion,” and laundering up to $600 million.
Ultimately, Judge Muntoni acquitted Bruzzese, ruling that there was “no concrete evidence” he belonged to the “Mafia organization specific to this trial.”
Still, Muntoni described Bruzzese as “definitely part of the Calabrian Mafia.” And that in the broader picture, Bruzzese — who did not appear at the hearing but was represented by his lawyer — was “deeply embedded in Canadian and Italian organized crime . . . and has close relations with almost all the leading members of the Rizzuto clan.”