Agents turn the heat on 'Pizza Connection’

Press, 11 April 1984, Page 10

Agents turn the heat on 'Pizza Connection’

NZPA-Reuter New York Hundreds of Federal agents have smashed the “Pizza Connection” — a big United States heroin ring run by Mafia chieftains that used pizza parlours in New York and the middle west as drug smuggling fronts. The arrests of 25 people in the ring alleged to have smuggled heroin worth JUSI.6 billion into the United States during the last five years were announced yesterday by the Attorney-General, Mr William French Smith, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation chief, Mr William Webster. Among those arrested was Italy’s most-wanted criminal, a Mafia leader, Gaetano Badalamenti, described by United States officials as one of the world’s biggest heroin exporters. Badalamenti, aged 51, was seized on Monday in Madrid as he met his nephew, Petro Alfano, a pizza parlour owner from the small town of Oregon,

Illinois. Alfano, who was also arrested, was one of five Midwest pizza parlour owners and Badalamenti relatives who collected heroin from him. then passed it to a New’ York underworld organisation headed by Salvatore Catalano, aged 43, officials alleged. Catalano, who is alleged to have used a bakery and a pizza parlour as fronts for his activities, headed the "Catalano faction” of the Bonnano crime family, one of five main Mafia gangs in New York city. According to indictments released yesterday, Catalano also master-minded a money-laundering scheme which invested millions of dollars from heroin sales in stocks through such NewYork brokerage houses as E. F. Hutton, and Merrill Lynch, and in commodity futures in Switzerland. Officials said that the banks and brokerage houses did not know of the ring’s activities. They said that the

governments of Switzerland. Spain, France, West Germany, Belgium, Luxemburg, and Canada had co-operated fully in the investigation. “This is the most significant case involving heroin trafficking by traditional organised crime that has ever been developed by the Federal Government,” Mr French Smith said. Catalano has been remanded in custody in lieu of SUSS million bail. One of his alleged lieutenants, Giuseppe Ganci, the owner of a chain of pizza restaurants, has been held in lieu of ?U57.5 million bail. Officials said that Ganci was held on higher bail because they had traced more assets to him than to Catalano. Rudolph Guiliani, the Federal prosecutor for Manhattan. alleged that the leaders of the ring had often used pizza parlour terms to move drug consignments. “Sometimes on the phone they say, ‘the cheese is not ready’ to describe one of their deals,” he said.