14 FACE DRUG CHARGES IN WIDESPREAD RAIDS

Probe started in Toronto, spread to Mexico, U.S. and Europe

Police say they've lopped off the head of one of the world's richest and
money-powerful Mafia groups with a series of early morning arrests yesterday.

Although about 200 police officers in three countries made 14 arrests in
the pre-dawn raids, a band of eight Toronto-area cops were the ones behind
the project, code-named omerta, which mean conspiracy of silence in Italian.

Those arrested include the alleged major figure in the outfit - a Canadian
citizen - along with several relatives.

Facing conspiracy to import and traffic in illicit narcotics are:

* Alfonso Caruana, 52, of Woodbridge; * Alberto Minelli, 33, of Miami; *
Oreste Pagano, 60, of Cancun, Mexico; * Ignazio Genua, 30, of Toronto; *
Domenic Rossi, 68, of Richmond Hill; * Gerlando Caruana, 54, of St.
Leonard, Que.; * Giuseppe Caruana, 28, of St. Leonard, Que.; * John Curtis
Hill, 29, of Sault Ste. Marie; * Richard Court, 31, of Saint Laurent, Que.;
* Marcel Bureau, 51, of Montreal; * Pasquale Caruana, 50, of Maple; *
Anthony Larosa, 22, Nunzio Larosa, 50, Anna Staniscia-Zaino, 43, all of
Montreal.

MAJOR FIGURE

About three years ago, Toronto police started looking into a man they
believed was a major figure in an alleged crime family tied internationally
to drug smuggling and money laundering.

Soon after, police quietly put together a team of eight undercover officers
to gather evidence on the outfit, whose members were mostly from two families.

None of the eight, however, was identified at a huge news conference
yesterday, with senior officers saying the unit worked better when its
members kept a low profile.

Explaining the top-secret police operation was left to Inspector Ben Soave
of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, head of the Toronto Integrated
Intelligence Unit.

Those charged were members of the Cuntrera-Caruana family. It allegedly
runs a multi-billion dollar financial empire that supplies illicit
narcotics and launders crime profits for many of the world's top underworld
families, Soave said.

At a Montreal news conference on the same series of raids, police said an
error by a drug courier provided a key break to police.

``During the investigation we found one weak link among the workers and we
started to investigate that guy,'' RCMP Sergeant Guy Quintal said.

That worker was caught with a truckload of cocaine after neglecting to
build a concealed compartment in the vehicle to transport money and drugs
between Canada and the United States.

After several trial runs, Canadian and American officials tailed the cocky
couriers over the border last May at Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. They were
arrested in Houston, Texas.

``They didn't really hide the drugs,'' Quintal said. ``They were confident
they could cross the border without problems.''

Throughout the Toronto news conference, and afterward, police tried to put
what they described as a ``ugly face'' to the ``invisible'' world of the
organized crime group.

``If you try to put a face on it . . . a perfect example is the next time
somebody is selling drugs in a school yard to very young children . . .
this is organized crime,'' Soave said.

While wounding the organization with the arrests, and perhaps slowing the
business down, possibly causing prices to go up, it won't have a ``major,
significant impact'' on the drug trade, he continued.

``This group was (drug) trafficking all over the world, not only in
Canada,'' Soave said. ``So perhaps a portion of what they were bringing in
was staying in Canada. The rest was going to the United States, Europe and
elsewhere.''

But police were able to hurt the outfit in another way, he said, one that
can't be measured in charges.

``Their reputation, their credibility as a criminal organization has been
shattered because they had been virtually untouched'' during the more than
three decades they had been operating, he said.

Police efforts to combat such huge, well-organized crime outfits are
difficult and costly, Soave said, and can't be done by one police force
alone, or even by one country.

`VERY EXPENSIVE'

``Organized crime investigations are very expensive,'' Soave told reporters.

Costs include the technical aspects - such as wiretaps, and the
transcribing of phone calls, surveillance of suspected smugglers - and the
overtime tab because smugglers don't work office hours.

``Organized crime has no borders,'' Soave said. ``We have to travel to all
these places . . . to collect, and disseminate and co-ordinate the
intelligence'' involved.

He estimated that the Canadian end of the project cost about $1 million.

It started about three years ago when members of the Toronto police
intelligence unit discovered that a man they believed to be the head of one
of the world's biggest crime outfits had moved to the area.

The group specialized in large scale drug smuggling and money laundering
with bases throughout the world: Miami, New York, Mexico City, Toronto,
Montreal, Houston, as well as in Europe, including Italy, Spain, and the
Netherlands.

The organization also operated in Venezuela, Aruba, England, France,
Germany, Spain, Thailand and India.

They also had a sophisticated money laundering organization that saw the
drug cash moving from accounts in Toronto and Montreal to Miami, Houston,
Mexico City, onto numbered accounts in Lugano, Switzerland, and from there
to Colombia.

Then began a series of calls to other police forces, first the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, in New York, and then Italian authorities.

An undercover operation then began targeting the organization, primarily
two families united through marriage, which had been in business for more
than 30 years. The organization got its start smuggling hashish, before
moving on to cocaine and heroin smuggling, police said.

It was suspected the outfit shipped huge amounts of cocaine and heroin from
South America to both North America and Europe.

Detectives believed tonnes of illicit narcotics were being moved around the
world, including 11 metric tonnes of illicit drugs in just one shipment.

But detectives needed to make their own seizure before trying to close in
on the outfit.

Police were to learn about four months ago of a major shipment of cocaine
destined for Canada.

Investigators eventually seized 200 kilograms of cocaine in May - ``a drop
in the bucket'' to the organization, said Soave.

Its seizure by police will be written off by the outfit, he said, as the
``cost of doing business.''

He said the seizure came following what he described as ``luck'' and the
deciphering of the coded language used by the smugglers. He wouldn't
elaborate.

Soave said investigators knew the major players in the organization, but
getting evidence on them took time.

They followed omerta, or the code of silence, said Soave, a name the police
picked as their project title.

With the code of silence and the family connection ``who is going to betray
them within this organization?'' Soave said.

The strength of this organization, he went on to say, was also in the way
they managed to stay out of the limelight, eschewing violence.

``This group did not want to attract the attention that violence brings,''
he said.

They were more like a support group to other crime organizations, he said,
providing them, for instance, with money laundering services.

And because the outfit had largely been able to avoid the authorities for
much of its existence they came to think they were untouchable, he said.

``I believe they felt they were invincible . . . until this point in
time,'' he said.

Undercover officers secretly followed around some key players, but he
admitted members of the team were noticed, or ``burned'' by the people they
were tailing.

Trying to ``outwit'' an established crime family was not easy, Soave said.

`A SPECK'

Soave was asked to compare the size of the organization being hunted and
the police task force.

``We're a speck of sand in the Sahara Desert compared to their
organization, financially and in numbers,'' he said.

The arrests of the four Toronto-area men came shortly after daybreak. The
men were taken to 32 Division in North York, where they were fingerprinted
and photographed.

Although three of the men tried to hide their faces from news
photographers, one of the men sat up straight in the back seat of a police
cruiser.

DIDN'T FLINCH

Alfonso Caruana stared straight ahead and didn't flinch as photographers
and television camera operators pressed lenses against a rear window.

Another of the accused, Domenic Rossi, looked confused as he was helped
from a police cruiser. As Rossi, 68, was led into the police station, an
officer carried a tray of medication for the man, who wore shorts, a plaid
shirt and slippers.

With files from Peter Edwards, Jim Rankin, Cal Millar and Canadian Press

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski