La Repubblica: “La piovra sbarca a Malta”

This article from the Italian national newspaper La Repubblica (February 2002) is worth reading in the current context. It’s about Italian mafia plans – together with “la mafia Maltese” – to launder money through the opening of casinos.

It mentions the Casino di Venezia in Vittoriosa, and how it folded, and argues that the failure of the mafia to get a secure a casino licence in Sicily led them to focus on Malta as an alternative location a hop, skip and a jump away.

I’ve pulled out the most interesting bit (to a Maltese person) and then translated it as best I could. Victor Balzan – whose name used to crop up frequently in connection with Lorry Sant and Piju Camilleri back in the day – died earlier this year. He never went to jail, nor was he ever tried for anything.

Some time before this article was published in La Repubblica, Victor Balzan was at the heart of a multi-million drug bust, code-named Operation Green Ice, Sole 1 and Sole 2, by the American Drugs Enforcement Agency and Italy’s anti-mafia police. They had raided a flotilla of Sicilian fishing-boats operating out of Mazzara del Vallo, which were used to traffic tonnes of cocaine, marijuana and heroin from North Africa, via Malta to Sicily and then on to the United States.

Meinrad Calleja was sentenced to 15 years in prison for trafficking cocaine (while his father was Commander of the Armed Forces of Malta) and is now out and about on the university campus among young university students masquerading as an academic and intellectual.

His father Maurice, the brigadier in whose home his son Meinrad kept and passed on cocaine by the kilo, was appointed by the incoming Labour government to some army complaints commission along with the Tourism Minister’s father-in-law, Raphael Farrugia aka Bagollu and never stopped being used as a ‘court expert’ for ballistics even in drug-murder trials.

This island needs its own Giovanni Falcone but chance would be a fine thing. From La Repubblica:

Nel 1994 microspie piazzate dallo Sco, il Servizio centrale operativo della polizia italiana, all’ albergo Raphael e nello studio di un avvocato siciliano a Roma, in via Serperi, registrarono summit di mafia.

In 1994, bugging devices placed by (the Italian police) at the Hotel Raphael and in the office of a Sicilian lawyer at Via Serperi in Rome, recorded a Mafia summit.

Erano presenti il boss maltese Victor Balzano (ex funzionario pubblico maltese che concedeva le licenze di pesca alle imbarcazioni mazaresi che trasportavano invece, armi, hashish e cocaina), il capomafia di Mazara del Vallo Giovanni Bastone e l’ ex sindaco di Mazara del Vallo, Rino Bocina. Al centro di quegli incontri, la realizzazione di un grande casinò a Malta.

Those present were the Maltese boss Victor Balzan (a former public official in Malta who had ceded his fishing licence to boats from Mazara del Vallo which were then used to transport weapons, marijuana and cocaine instead), Mazara del Vallo’s Mafia chief, Giovanni Bastone, and the former mayor of Mazara del Vallo, Rino Bocina. The subject of the meeting was the setting up of a big casino in Malta.

I soldi, 1.500 miliardi, erano stati già stanziati per acquistare l’ isolotto di Manuel, la fortezza costruita dai Cavalieri di San Giovanni tra La Valletta e Sliema. L’ affare fu rimandato perché Bastone e Bocina finirono in carcere. Il boss maltese, Victor Balzano, tornò in patria.

The funds for this (the figure is probably a reference to the pre-euro currency, the Italian lira) had been found already for the acquisition of Manoel Island, a fort built by the Knights of St John between Valletta and Sliema. The matter was put off because Bastone and Bocina were imprisoned. Victor Balzan went back to Malta.

Un paio di anni fa, poi, a casa di Stefano Potestio, un imprenditore “rosso” coinvolto in un’ inchiesta dei carabinieri su mafia e appalti, fu trovata una documentazione che rivelava la sua intenzione di costituire proprio a La Valletta una società offshore tramite uno studio di consulenza guidato dal maltese Joseph Tabone.

Then a couple of years ago, documents were found at the home of Stefano Potestio, a ‘red’ entrepreneur embroiled in a Carabinieri investigation into the Mafia and procurement. Those documents revealed his plans to set up an offshore company in Malta through a consultancy firm run by Joseph Tabone.

I rapporti tra Cosa Nostra e mafia maltese sono provati anche dalle dichiarazioni di numerosi pentiti di mafia e anche da un recente processo a La Valletta dove è stato giudicato e condannato a 15 anni di reclusione, per traffico internazionale di stupefacenti, il figlio dell’ ex capo delle forze armate dell’ isola, Kallaja Mairad.

The dealings between the Cosa Nosta and the Maltese mafia are proven even by the testimony of many Mafia ‘pentiti’ (former Mafiosi who turned state’s evidence), and even by a recent trial in Valletta in which the son of the former Commander of the Armed Forces of Malta, Meinrad Calleja, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for cocaine-trafficking.

Un suo uomo lo ha tradito e ha anche raccontato di essere stato testimone di un incontro tra maltesi e il boss siciliano Giovanni Brusca, il «boia» di Capaci, adesso pentito. I maltesi avevano chiesto a Brusca di fornire un paio di killer per uccidere il presidente maltese, Fennech Adam, ma il capomafia siciliano si rifiutò «per non interferire nella politica di Malta».

One of his men had betrayed him and even testified how he was witness to a meeting between Maltese individuals and the Sicilian (crime) boss Giovanni Brusc of Capaci, who has now turned state’s evidence. The Maltese had asked Brusca to supply a couple of hit-men to assassinate the Maltese (prime minister) Fenech Adami, but the Sicilian mafia chief refused “so as not to interfere in Maltese politics”.

Ma i rapporti e gli affari tra le due organizzazioni criminali continuano. Nei mesi scorsi Antonino Ingroia, componente della Direzione Distrettuale Antimafia di Palermo, è andato a Malta dove si è incontrato con i colleghi e i funzionari della polizia dell’ isola per alcune indagini su Cosa nostra e successivamente il capo della Squadra mobile di Ragusa Giuseppe Bellassai e il questore, Carmelo Casabona hanno infittito i rapporti con la polizia maltese smantellando una banda di scafisti che con alcuni mafiosi siciliani gestivano il più grande traffico di extracomunitari del Mediterraneo.

But the liaison between the two criminal organisations (the Maltese and the Italian mafia) continued. In the last few months, Antonio Ingroia, of Palermo’s Anti-Mafia Command, has gone to Malta for meeting with his colleagues there and with police officials on the island, for investigations into the Cosa Nosta. Since then, Giuseppe Bellassai, chief of Ragusa’s police mobile squad, and the superintendent, Carmelo Casabona, have intensified their liaison with the Malta police, leading to the dismantling of a smuggling-ring made up of several Sicilian Mafiosi, which was responsible for most human-trafficking in the Mediterranean.

Una componente dell’ organizzazione, una tunisina di 30 anni che faceva parte della banda, ha abbandonato l’ isola e collabora con gli investigatori italiani facendo nomi e cognomi di ufficiali e poliziotti corrotti che fanno affari con tutti, anche con i siciliani.

One of the members of the smuggling-ring, a 30-year-old Tunisian woman, fled the island and collaborated with Italian investigators, giving them names and surnames of corrupt officials and police officers who helped with the smuggling of people, even with the Sicilians.

A Malta i siciliani sono ormai di casa. Gestiscono alcuni locali e il loro punto di ritrovo è un bar sul porto di Sliema dove due anni fa la polizia italiana arrestò un killer di mafia latitante da tre anni. E all’ ormeggio c’ è ancora uno delle due navi di Francesco Cardella, il guru della comunità Saman di Trapani, latitante, che a Malta ha costituito società finanziarie e nascosto parte del suo tesoro.

Sicilians feel at home in Malta by now. They run various bars, cafes and restaurants, and their gathering-point is a bar at the Ferries in Sliema, where two years ago the Italian police arrested (this would have to be the Maltese police acting on information from their Italian colleagues) a Mafia hit-man who had been on the run for three years. And Francesco Cardella, the ‘guru’ of the Saman Community near Trapani and a fugitive, still has one of his two yachts moored there, and has also hidden part of his wealth through companies set up in Malta.