The alleged leaders of the Rizzuto Crime family were arrested in a radical police operation which, according to a Leonardo Rizzuto expert, 56, and Stefano Sollecito, 57, were among the 11 suspects in detention Thursday with five other wanted in the context of Project Alliance, a three -year investigation into organized crime in Quebec. Rizzuto – The son of the late boss of Mob, Vito Rizzuto, appeared before the court by video, where his lawyer pleaded not guilty. Sollecito, which seemed fragile and in a wheelchair, remains in detention. The accusations against men concern a series of murders between 2011 and 2021. The arrests followed coordinated raids of nearly 150 officers from Montreal, Laval, Quebec and neighboring regions. Nicola Spagnolo, Davide Barberio and Jean-Richard Larivière, a longtime member of the Hells Angels. Antonio Nicaso, an organized crime expert and professor at Queen’s University, qualified the arrests of serious reverse for the Rizzuto network. “It is a devastating blow that effectively beheads the management of the Rizzuto Crime family, an organization that has lost the power it had in Montreal for a few years,” Nicaso told The Gazette. Criminologist Maria Mourani said the operation reflects the importance of targets. “We see several very important members of the Italian mafia in Montreal who are targeted,” she said. “This is good news.” She said it remains to be seen, but arrests can cause a possible “slight destabilization” of the Montreal criminal landscape. “Whenever there are police operations, there are individuals who will replace other people,” said Mourani. “You can expect certain groups will try to take the dishes.”
This is the third major operation targeting the Rizzuto network in less than two decades, following the Colisée project in 2006 and the Magot-Mastiff project in 2015. The latter collapsed after the allegations of police fault, and the charges were abandoned. Authorities claim that the last investigation is remarkable for its accusations of murder. Although the police did not confirm it on Thursday, the investigation was largely built on the information of Frédéric Silva, a wage killer condemned now serving several perpetuity sentences. Several search mandates linked to the current survey were conducted in December 2023. At the time, the Sûreté du Québec declared in a press release that the search mandates were “part of a major criminal investigation, which aimed to elucidate several murders linked to the organized crime which occurred in Montreal and (north of Montreal) from the mid -1990s. targeted. “Thursday, Mourani said that there was no unique leader in organized Quebec crime, but that there are rather than” different groups and families “. The Sicilian rooted Rizzuto family has once dominated the Montreal hell, but its influence has since decreased. “Will these individuals be condemned?” Will they stay on the street? ” Said Mourani. “We will have to look closely.”
https://www.montrealgazette.com/news/local-crime/article986717.html
