Corsican & French mob

[aleksandrored]

Thanks man.

[motorfab]

Assassination of Antoine Sollacaro, episode n°2: In the footsteps of the killers' motorcycle https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr ... 1602617235

[motorfab]

Assassination of Antoine Sollacaro, episode n° 3: Le Petit Bar in the sights of investigators https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr ... 1602702169

[motorfab]

In Marseille, a former DGSI police officer in custody for facilitating several mob hits https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr ... 1602721411

[motorfab]

Assassination of Antoine Sollacaro, episode n°4: The repentant of the Petit Bar relaunches the investigation https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr ... 84100.html

[motorfab]

Assassination of Antoine Sollacaro, episode n°5 (final part): The vicissitudes of the judicial procedure https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr ... 84344.html

[motorfab]

The murder of Judge Pierre Michel

On October 21, 1981 at 12:49 p.m., while on a motorbike on his way to lunch with his family, judge Pierre Michel, 38, slowed down at a Boulevard Michelet crossroads in Marseille and was shot dead by two men on a motorbike who came up to him. 3 bullets. One bullet enters the shoulder, another penetrates the thorax, puncturing the heart and lung, another at the base of the neck, severing the spinal cord. Death is instantaneous. This is the second time that a judge has been assassinated in France since the post-war period (the other being Judge François Renaud in 1975, killed by the Lyon underworld. No one has ever been convicted). It is not just any judge who has just been shot, nor in any place because in addition to investigating many cases (pimping, theft, arms trafficking) Judge Michel left in crusade against drug trafficking in what was still the world capital of heroin trafficking at the time: Marseille. In short, not only Judge Michel is considered one of the greatest judges in France, but in addition the assassins have just attacked a symbol of the republic.



48 hours later, the attackers' motorcycle was found in the parking lot of a building thanks to a witness who had noted part of the vehicle registration. It was stolen a year earlier, probably by a team specializing in theft and concealment of motorcycles. A well-known thief team from the neighborhood police is arrested and questioned by the police but is released for lack of evidence. The Scientific Police teams therefore dissected the motorcycle and found a fingerprint on the back of a sticker. The fingerpprint belongs to a man named Charles Giardina, a mechanic, who is immediately watched. The police discover that he is linked to Gilbert Ciaramaglia, a mobster associated with Gaetan Zampa. While digging into Ciaramaglia's life, the police discover that the mobster has been driving the motorcycle for a year and that recently he even received several gifts from Zampa. This time, the investigation changes dimension, the method of the murder was thinking of the mob, it seems to be confirmed and Giardina & Ciramaglia are arrested to be questioned. Without results and the 2 men (plus another, Daniel Danti) are released ... The investigators therefore decide to resume the judge's files related to drug trafficking and discover that a few months before his death, the judge had dismantled a laboratory of manufacture of heroin. 10 people had been arrested, and one of the mobsters had apparently planned to meet the judge to give him information to indict Zampa (a notebook containing Zampa's contact details was found there). The interview will never take place, the judge is assassinated a few days later ... Zampa left on the run for a few months knowing that he was wanted to be questioned about the killing of the Téléhpone bar (which, moreover, Judge Michel was in charge of investigation) and on the judge was arrested in October 1983. During 1984, while he was also on trial for tax evasion and in full mental decay (see Chapter 4), he proclaimed his innocence and said that he would have revelations to make about the assassination of the Judge. He did nothing and died on August 16, 1984 following a suicide attempt in his cell (some think that he would have been «helped» to commit suicide). The Zampa trail is close and the investigation is at a standstill.


Gilbert Ciaramaglia & Charles Giardina

It was not until November 1985 that the case bounced back and took a new turn completely by chance. A laboratory is dismantled in Friborg in Switzerland by the DEA and 4 Marseille gangsters are arrested. One of the chemists, Philippe Wiesgrill, questioned by the French police, makes revelations about the murder of the judge but refuses to sign his confession. The police then had the idea to question one of the 4 chemists, François Scapula, who has the reputation of being not against to talk to the police. Scapula has just made a deal with the DEA which would have promised him protection, a passage through cosmetic surgery and a reconversion into a new life, perhaps across the Atlantic. Scapula agrees to collaborate in exchange for his non-extradition to France and gives the two men on motorbikes: François Checchi who would have shot and Charles Altieri who drove the motorbike (no luck for him, he is precisely one of the 4 men arrested in Switzerland with Scapula & Wiesgrill) as well as one of those who allegedly ordered the murder, Homere Fillipi. Altieri confirms and even gives the second organizer of the murder: François Girard.


Left: François Scapula & Charles Altieri. Right: Jean Guy & Philippe Wiesgrill

Luckily, Checchi & Girard are already in jail for narcotics cases. Girard & Filippi would have met in prison, where they would have been sentenced because of judge Michel. It was there that they would have decided to have him assassinated. Filippi was in fact one of the 10 men arrested during the dismantled of the laboratory by judge Michel. In the meantime he had been released by the courts, but still had time to organize the murder of the judge with Girard.

The trial opens in 1988, without the presence of Filippi & Altieri. Indeed, Filippi is nowhere to be found and Altieri, who in the meantime has denied his confession, took the opportunity to escape from his Swiss prison. The wives of Filippi & Girard are also among the accused, they would have transmitted the messages to Altieri & Checchi. Verdict:

-Filippi is sentenced to life in absentia


-Girard is sentenced to life imprisonment with an 18-year parole.


-Altieri is sentenced to life in absentia


-Checchi is sentenced to life imprisonment, with an 18-year parole.


-The 2 wives are acquitted.

Altieri was finally arrested in 1993 in Cyprus by Interpol and was finally sentenced like the others to life imprisonment with an 18-year parole.

-Homere Filippi has never been found. He would be dead now (according to some rumors in a mob hit or illness)
-The other 3 have now been released from prisons (Altieri & Checchi in 2014, Girard in 2017).
-Philippe Wiesgrill is now free and is believed to be living somewhere in the south of France.
-Charles Giardina served 1 year in prison in another case and also lives in the south of France
-Gilbert Ciramaglia was assassinated in a mob hit
-François Scapula "escaped" from his Swiss prison in November 2000 and disappeared which fed a rumor that he would have been exfiltrated by the American authorities and would live in America under a new identity.

We will never know if Zampa, La Cosa Nostra or the Camorra (for obvious reasons were also suspected) were involved in the murder of Judge Pierre Michel.

[Villain]

Another interesting case and thanks Motorfab.

I have one question since i possibly didnt quite understand...Zampa survived suicide attempt and later died right? And if so, what happened next?

[aleksandrored]

Another amazing article fella, thanks.

Is Judge Pierre Michel still a big name in France? like Falcone for example?

[motorfab]

Another interesting case and thanks Motorfab.

I have one question since i possibly didnt quite understand...Zampa survived suicide attempt and later died right? And if so, what happened next?

Yes, he hanged himself with a jumping rope on July 23, 1984 (why a jumping rope appear in the cell of a depressed guy? another mystery), and died later on August 16. In fact it was his cellmate, Marc-Robert Schandeler, a former associate of Zampa, who was woken up by moans and called for help. They tried to revive him, but his nerve cells were destroyed and he fell into a coma before dying later.
It's a strange coincidence that he commits suicide if he has something to reveal about the Judge's case. Unfortunately, the only one to know what happened that day is Schandeler, but he was shot on December 21, 1989 shortly after his release ...
As I said he did not support prison very badly and in fact he even made two other attempts in June 1984. In 1968 he had done the same during his incarceration for carrying weapons ... That could explain why he wanted to talk and maybe reduce his sentence. Or get preferential treatment or a transfer to a softer prison.
His son Mathieu (not involved in organized crime) also committed suicide in 2015: he was involved in a drug trafficking network, but it seems that he was selling just to be able to pay for his own consumption ...

Another amazing article fella, thanks.

Is Judge Pierre Michel still a big name in France? like Falcone for example?

Definitely yes. Judge François Renaud is completely forgotten (it's sad), but we continue to talk about Michel and he was defintely the French equivalent of Falcone/Borsellino. In addition his murderers were recently released and a film inspired by his murder and Zampa was released in 2014 (La French or The Connection for international exploitation).

Unrelated to the case, but to be complete with the Zampas, Zampa's half-brother, Jean Tocci was also one of the big name of the French Underworld and he is strongly suspected of killing Paul Mondoloni in 1985, one of the last bosses Corsican bosses. Tocci was shot in 1997 or by Le Mat & Le Belge or La Brise De Mer gang or Jean Jé Colonna. In any case, certainly in retaliation for the murder of Mondoloni who was highly respected (I will certainly talk about it one day)

[Villain]

Another interesting case and thanks Motorfab.

I have one question since i possibly didnt quite understand...Zampa survived suicide attempt and later died right? And if so, what happened next?

Yes, he hanged himself with a jumping rope on July 23, 1984 (why a jumping rope appear in the cell of a depressed guy? another mystery), and died later on August 16. In fact it was his cellmate, Marc-Robert Schandeler, a former associate of Zampa, who was woken up by moans and called for help. They tried to revive him, but his nerve cells were destroyed and he fell into a coma before dying later.
It's a strange coincidence that he commits suicide if he has something to reveal about the Judge's case. Unfortunately, the only one to know what happened that day is Schandeler, but he was shot on December 21, 1989 shortly after his release ...
As I said he did not support prison very badly and in fact he even made two other attempts in June 1984. In 1968 he had done the same during his incarceration for carrying weapons ... That could explain why he wanted to talk and maybe reduce his sentence. Or get preferential treatment or a transfer to a softer prison.
His son Mathieu (not involved in organized crime) also committed suicide in 2015: he was involved in a drug trafficking network, but it seems that he was selling just to be able to pay for his own consumption ...

Thanks a lot bud. It seems the judge alsi had a lot of enemies in his own organization, meaning judicial system and law enforcement. Again, great work.

[motorfab]

Another interesting case and thanks Motorfab.

I have one question since i possibly didnt quite understand...Zampa survived suicide attempt and later died right? And if so, what happened next?

Yes, he hanged himself with a jumping rope on July 23, 1984 (why a jumping rope appear in the cell of a depressed guy? another mystery), and died later on August 16. In fact it was his cellmate, Marc-Robert Schandeler, a former associate of Zampa, who was woken up by moans and called for help. They tried to revive him, but his nerve cells were destroyed and he fell into a coma before dying later.
It's a strange coincidence that he commits suicide if he has something to reveal about the Judge's case. Unfortunately, the only one to know what happened that day is Schandeler, but he was shot on December 21, 1989 shortly after his release ...
As I said he did not support prison very badly and in fact he even made two other attempts in June 1984. In 1968 he had done the same during his incarceration for carrying weapons ... That could explain why he wanted to talk and maybe reduce his sentence. Or get preferential treatment or a transfer to a softer prison.
His son Mathieu (not involved in organized crime) also committed suicide in 2015: he was involved in a drug trafficking network, but it seems that he was selling just to be able to pay for his own consumption ...

Thanks a lot bud. It seems the judge alsi had a lot of enemies in his own organization, meaning judicial system and law enforcement. Again, great work.

Indeed Judge Michel had rather radical methods, at the level of his fellow magistrates it is especially the defense lawyers that he annoyed. But it depends what and where he was looking he could also have upset politicians or something like that.

On the other hand, he was very respected by the police. According to Lucien-Aimé Blanc, a former great cop from Marseille who knew him well: "he was a judge but it is as if he was wearing a uniform" or "to make sure we charge someone he was interested he said to us: "here is a blank warrant, you will find something to put in it" ". Besides, in the dismantling of the laboratory I'm talking about (the one where Filippi is arrested) he was there with the cops. Not all judges do that lol

[motorfab]

Corsica: justice investigates mysterious financial flows related to the Petit Bar, a pillar of organized crime on the island (Subscribers only, but you have part of the article. If anyone knows how to blow these kinds of restrictions, he will be my new best friend) https://www.lemonde.fr/police-justice/a ... 53578.html

[motorfab]

Great stuff Motorfab and thanks again.

One question since i never did any research on this....i know that the Corsicans had their own labs and they received the opium mainly from Turkey or the Middle East, and these guys also had their own labs and already produced heroin. So why bother producing something in your own country by building secret labs and stuff, when they already had the final product out on the market? Was it cheaper to bring raw opium and then produce heroin? I doubt that the Turkish or Syrian smugglers in those days had expensive stuff....

Excellent question, I answer you here, to advance my thread, it will maybe start a conversation about heroin trafficking.

In fact no, the product arriving in Marseille is not the final product. In the 1930s until the 1950s (I am not counting the 1940s for obvious reasons the traffic was at a standstill), it is raw opium transformed into heroin and not simple opium to be resold later for opium dens (I think it was legal at one time, but I don't know when it was banned). Opium most often arrived from Indochina which was then a French colony and where opium was legal until the mid-1940s. Indochina being a colony and the Corsicans a seafaring people, it goes without saying that 'a good number of mobsters were present there to run brothels or smokehouses. They also supplied brothels in South America with opium. It was not until the 1950s and the loss of Indochina that they turned to Turkey and Lebanon to obtain poppy supplies, where they extracted the morphine base to transform it into almost pure heroin. The geniuses in this area being Dominique Albertini and his half brother Joseph Césari who made 98% pure heroin. There were also many Marseillais gangsters of Armenian origin (Antranik Paroutian to quote a rather famous one)


Dominique Albertini


Joseph Césari

I think they brought in the opium and then the base morphine in Marseille (or in Sicily afterwards), for a geographic reason. Marseille is on the edge of the Mediterranean and the mobsters controlled the port. In the 1930s dope only transited in Marseille, often it went through Paris to be then shipped from the port of Le Havre, what will change later

Which brings me to another point: why were the Corsicans so good at processing pure heroine? It seems that a former laboratory assistant, Charles Fortin, was addicted to gambling and prostitutes ... He would have met Dominique Albertini there, who had trained as a pharmacy technician. No need to be a genius to guess the rest
Another theory that is very probably false, but which makes me laugh a lot, is that a guy who made fake Pastis (a famous aperitif alcohol made in Marseille) would have discovered by chance the recipe for making heroin

Speaking of Ricard, the company has served in spite of itself as the front business for the trafficking of heroin in Montreal: the brothers Dominique (whom I mention extensively in my previous texts) & Jean used the status of Jean's representative at Ricard to make transit of heroin in Montreal. Noted that the boss of Jean Venturi in Ricard was Charles Pasqua, future Minister of the Interior in the 90s, boss of the SAC (the parallel police in the service of General De Gaulle) and ... Corsican.


Jean Venturi


Charles Pasqua

[Villain]

Thanks again Motorfab, thats one quite good answer. So it was all about the quality of the heroin and I would also like to add by the late 40s or early 50s, some European organization ordered the final product. For example many criminals from Lebanon were involved in purchasing raw opium or morphine base from Aleppo, Syria, and after that the shipment was transported to Turkey, where the quantities of opium or morphine base were converted into heroin. Now the most interesting thing to note is that, according to the FBN, in those days first the shipment went to Marseille, France, and from there it went to Naples, Genoa or Palermo in Italy. Italy is way closer to Turkey than France but it seems that during those days the Corsicans were way ahead in the dope business than the Italians/Sicilians.