REPUTED MONTREAL MOB BOSS SENT TO FACE U.S. CHARGES

Ruling Ended 2-Year Battle Against Deportation

Rizzuto Called Godfather Of Canadian Mafia

MONTREAL--Reputed mob boss Vito Rizzuto, frequently described as the
godfather of the Canadian mafia, has been extradited to face
conspiracy charges in the murder of three New York gangsters after
the Supreme Court of Canada turned down his last-ditch appeal to
remain in the country.

A panel of three justices refused to hear Rizzuto's appeal of a 2005
federal extradition order, ending a two-year legal fight. The
justices provided no explanation for their decision, as is the custom.

The top court issued its ruling yesterday morning and by lunchtime
Rizzuto, 60, had been handed over to the FBI and was on his way to
New York City, where he will be formally arraigned for his alleged
part in plotting the 1981 murders of three gangland figures.

"Vito Rizzuto is the most charismatic alleged mafia boss that Canada
has ever seen," said Antonio Nicaso, a Toronto security consultant
who has authored several books on organized crime and is now at work
on a biography of Rizzuto.

"This is the first time he will face justice for any serious crime,"
Nicaso added.

Known for his immaculately tailored suits and his golf game, the
suave, multilingual Rizzuto has never been successfully prosecuted
for anything more major than conspiracy to commit arson -- a 1972
conviction that netted a two-year jail term.

Despite his relative anonymity, law enforcement officials contend
Rizzuto oversaw a vast criminal empire that imported and distributed
tonnes of illicit drugs in Canada, laundered hundreds of millions of
dollars, lent out millions more through loansharking operations and
profited handsomely from illegal gambling, fraud and contract killings.

In the early 1990s, Rizzuto was arrested and charged with smuggling
16 tonnes of hashish into Canada, but a judge threw the case out
after ruling police investigators used illegal wiretaps during the
investigation.

In the U.S., a grand jury indicted Rizzuto in early 2004 under
federal racketeering statutes that provide stiff penalties for
gang-related activities. The Sicilian-born Rizzuto faces 20 years in
prison if convicted.

Former RCMP organized crime analyst Pierre de Champlain said the end
of Rizzuto's legal battle against extradition is laden with
symbolism, given he is the first presumed head of a Canadian mafia
clan to face the U.S. courts.

"This is a turning point in the history of Montreal's Sicilian clan,"
said de Champlain, who has written extensively on organized crime.
"Having said that, the game is far from over. He must now be tried,
and that's not a foregone conclusion, even if he has a steep hill to
climb because two informers will testify against him."

The only way Rizzuto will be able to return to Canada, legal experts
say, is if he wins acquittal or makes an application to serve his
sentence here.

But even if Rizzuto manages to thwart the prosecution's efforts in
New York, he will still have to face charges in connection with an
$8.5 billion money-laundering scheme in Italy. Prosecutors in that
country have named Rizzuto as one of the central figures in the
affair, which centred on a project to build a bridge linking Sicily
with the Italian province of Calabria.

Of more immediate concern for Rizzuto -- who has spent lavishly in
his defence, retaining a team of a half-dozen lawyers -- are the
charges he will shortly face in a Brooklyn courtroom.

It's alleged Rizzuto was one of four gunmen hired by former Bonnano
crime family captain Joseph Massino to kill three other Bonnano
captains who were planning a power grab in 1981 after the
incarceration of then-boss Phil Rastelli.

The three were lured to a Brooklyn social club, where they were shot
to death. According to testimony in a New York court, Rizzuto hid in
a closet and was the first to open fire after bursting out.

Children later discovered the remains of Alphonse "Sonny Red"
Indelicato while playing in a vacant lot in the hardscrabble borough
of Queens. The bodies of the other two men, Dominick "Big Trin"
Trinchera and Philip "Philly Lucky" Giaccone, were exhumed from the
same lot several years later.

The Rizzuto clan, who investigators say has held sway over Montreal's
mafia since the early 1980s, emigrated to Canada in 1954 from the
small Sicilian farming hamlet of Cattolica Eraclea.

Family patriarch Nick Rizzuto -- an octogenarian who mafia experts
suggest resumed control of the Rizzuto organization when his son was
arrested -- was reputedly an associate of the Cotroni gang, which
controlled much of Montreal's drug trade in the 1970s. By the 1980s,
the Rizzutos had emerged as the city's pre-eminent mafia clan after a
series of gangland killings and the murder of Paolo Violi, a Cotroni
lieutenant, and all of Violi's brothers.

Nicaso said Rizzuto's deft handling of the Montreal mafia's various
criminal enterprises made him the first homegrown alleged mob boss to
expand beyond Quebec into Ontario -- Vito Rizzuto was once involved
with a waste management company in suburban Toronto -- and other
parts of Canada.

"He was able to extend the influence of his family well beyond
Montreal and into Europe, primarily with Italian groups, and into the
United States, primarily with New York crime families like the
Bonnanos," he said.

Testimony from mafia turncoats suggest Rizzuto took over control of
the family from his father in the 1990s, and de Champlain said he was
considered the Bonnano representative in Canada.

The Bonnanos, one of the fabled "big five" New York crime families,
are described in U.S. court documents as "the only La Cosa Nostra
family with a significant presence in Canada," and Rizzuto was
considered its "most influential" figure.

The disintegration of the Bonnano empire in 2003 prompted the series
of arrests that netted Rizzuto and 29 others, and came about chiefly
because prosecutors were able to secure the co-operation of Massino
and other senior members of the family.

Massino, who is serving a life sentence for murder, will testify
against Rizzuto, as will his brother-in-law Salvatore "Good-looking
Sal" Vitale, another long-time mob soldier who says he was among the
four men hired to carry out the purge.