POLICE HIT CRIME FAMILY

14 arrested, cocaine seized in three-country bust

Toronto -- Striking at a Sicilian crime family once dubbed "the Rothschilds
of the Mafia," police in Canada, Mexico and the United States arrested 10
alleged members yesterday on charges of conspiring to import and traffic
massive quantities of cocaine.

Five accused associates of the Cuntrera-Caruana gang, alleged to have
tentacles stretching around the world, were picked up in the Toronto area
yesterday, including alleged mastermind Alfonso Caruana, 52, arrested at
his rented home in nearby Woodbridge at 7 a.m. (There is also an arrest
warrant for him in Sicily stemming from some old Mafia-related charges.)

Three others were arrested in Montreal, and warrants were issued for two
others, currently in Italy. Two were detained in Cancun, Mexico, while two
more were already in custody in Texas.

Jewelry, a suitcase full of cash and a kilo of cocaine were also seized in
Toronto and Montreal.

Officers from all the Canadian police forces involved were exuberant at the
success of the investigation, based in Newmarket, just north of Toronto,
and termed Project Omerta.

"If organized crime was a hockey game, Mr. Caruana would be Gretzky," RCMP
Inspector Ben Soave told a packed news conference.

But in January, things were looking very different. The 18-month
investigation had all but dried up for lack of funds. Only an infusion of
cash from Criminal Intelligence Service Ontario kept the RCMP-led effort
alive.

"We were going to have to drop it," Insp. Soave said in an interview. "The
group would have remained untouchable, as it has for 30 years."

The shortfall was telling for the eight Newmarket-based Canadian officers
assigned full time to unravelling the Cuntrera-Caruana empire, which
originated in the Sicilian village of Siculiana and grew to a
billion-dollar enterprise stretching from Europe to Venezuela to North
America.

Even with the extra funds, the investigation still had no money for a
full-time analyst to assess the sea of complex data, encompassing more than
20 different police agencies. The tightly knit Cuntrera-Caruana clan has
been regarded as one of the biggest players in the drug field for decades.
Not only have they supplied mountains of cocaine, heroin and hashish to a
host of other groups, police say, but they have also acted for them as
money launderers.

The organization has shifted bases a number of times and was centred for
several years in the Caribbean island of Aruba and nearby Venezuela. Ever
since Mr. Caruana's arrival in 1995, Toronto is believed to have been the hub.

A major break in the case occurred on May 16 in Texas, 80 kilometres
outside Houston, when two Canadian residents were intercepted in a
northbound truck loaded with 200 kilograms of cocaine, worth an estimated
$6-million.

The cocaine was Colombian in origin but had been purchased in Mexico,
police believe.

Police said plans called for regular, similar-sized consignments through
Houston, Miami and Los Angeles every three to five weeks. While some of it
was allegedly intended for Canadian consumption, more was destined for
Europe, where a kilo of cocaine fetches almost twice the Canadian figure of
$35,000.

In 1994, authorities in Turin, Italy, seized a five-tonne shipment of
cocaine linked to the Cuntrera-Caruana family.

Because the clan is so closely interwoven through marriage and blood lines,
infiltration was not an option. That left the Combined Forces Special
Enforcement Unit, comprising the RCMP, Ontario Provincial Police and
officers from the Toronto, Peel and York regional police forces, heavily
reliant on wiretaps and constant surveillance.

And it was tough sledding, said RCMP Staff Sergeant Larry Tronstad, who
headed the day-to-day investigation.

"These guys change phones every week; it was a huge problem. At one point
we had over 100 pay phones wired hoping to get these guys. They are
extremely surveillance-conscious," he said in an interview.

Another major challenge was piecing together the route of the funds that
allegedly paid for the cocaine.

"The money was originating in Italy, then moving to Switzerland, then to
Miami, then to Caracas, then to Mexico and then on to here," Staff Sgt.
Tronstad said. "And in each of those countries they had a network set up,
opening and shutting bank accounts before we're even there. So a huge part
of this process is going to be identifying the paper trail."

Further complicating things was occasional friction with some of the
numerous foreign police agencies involved. In one country, liaison with
local authorities was particularly problematic.

"There's a lack of co-operation," said another officer close to the
investigation. "It's not intentional, it happens because of borders and
legal differences."

Mexico, however, had been especially helpful, he said.

In 1990, the Cuntrera-Caruana family wealth was estimated at more than
$500-million, but is thought to be substantially greater today.

Several family members have been convicted of drug trafficking in Italy. In
April of this year, Mr. Caruana was put on trial in absentia in connection
with the 1994 cocaine seizure, but he was acquitted. Sixty-one others,
however, were convicted and six received life imprisonment.

The Cuntrera-Caruana name surfaced most recently in Italy in May, when Mr.
Caruana's brother-in-law, Pasquale Cuntrera, escaped custody shortly before
the country's top court upheld a 21-year jail term for trafficking in drugs
between Canada, Venezuela and Sicily.

Copyright (c) 1998, The Globe and Mail Company

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski