Clear evidence of meeting with Mafia bosses to share bundles of cash – secretly caught on video by police – demonstrates organized crime involvement, even if no charges or convictions stemmed from it, the Federal Court heard Tuesday in a hearing over whether a Montreal mobster should be deported.
Moreno Gallo, 65, has lived in Canada since the age of nine but never became a Canadian citizen.
In 1974, he was convicted of murder after shooting a Montreal man three times in the head as he sat at the wheel of his car. Gallo claimed he shot in self-defence when confronting the victim over selling drugs at his young sister’s school. Police said it was a settling of accounts in a Mob war.
For decades, Gallo’s prison file had been mislabelled by Correctional Service Canada, listing him as a Canadian citizen. As a result, in 1983, he was released on full parole and has since lived in relative peace as a successful businessman.
But in 2005, he was recorded delivering stacks of cash to the leaders of the notorious Rizzuto crime family in the backroom of the Mob’s Montreal headquarters during Project Colisee, a large police probe targeting the city’s powerful Mafia.
On one visit, Nicolo Rizzuto, patriarch of the clan, tucked the money into his sock; on another, Rizzuto and other senior Mafia leaders divided it between themselves.
No charges were laid, but Gallo’s parole was revoked and it was discovered he was not a Canadian. The government has since been trying to deport him as a non-citizen involved in serious crime.
That crime, however, was not consorting with senior mobsters, but rather for his 1974 murder conviction. He has been fighting the government in court.
On Tuesday, his Toronto lawyer, Shoshana Green, argued in Federal Court an appeal against a decision by the government to return Gallo to his native Italy.
"There are a lot of allegations of organized crime, but the applicant has no (criminal) record of that," Green said. "They want to focus on this criminal association element, but there are no convictions for it. The RCMP chose not to proceed."
As such, it should not cloud the issue of her client’s clean recent record, family ties and business involvement in the community, she said.
Crown lawyer Ian Hicks argued that the government can weigh more than just convictions when making such decisions.
"This was hard evidence – police wiretaps and video surveillance of the applicant fraternizing with leaders of the Mafia . . . delivering money to the heads of the Mafia."
Hicks also pointed to Gallo’s admission he had acted as a mediator between the Mafia and the Hells Angels motorcycle club.
"No new charges doesn’t change the fact that he did this stuff," Hicks said.
Justice David G. Near reserved his decision.
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