An interview with Judge Falcone conducted by journalist Marcelle Padovani was also published. The interviews between Padovani & Falcone would later become the book "Cose di Cosa Nostra" (no idea if the book was translated into English, but if you can get it, go for it)
-The first article is on the mysteries surrounding the murder of Judge Michel
-The second is on François Scapula. Not everything is great in it, but it contains some good information
-The third focuses on the affair of the “French Sicilian Connection”
-The fourth is the interview with Judge Falcone
ps, I tried to translate as best as I could, sorry if there are still some translation errors
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Le Nouvel Observateur June 16, 1988.
The judge, the white powder and the thugs.
He smoked filter Gitane [a French cigarette brand, totally disgusting btw], loved Bach, hiding out with thugs and the dirty stories of Marseille. He didn't like crooks. He considered them vulgar, “horrible, dirty and nasty”. He was cultured, elegant, well-groomed and manic. And the thugs, of course, didn't like him either. They barely tolerated his ironic eyes hidden by thick glasses, his dry, icy way of asking questions. His exasperating, slow tone, his meticulous knowledge of the files. And especially this habit of playing Rubik's Cube during their audition. Absolute contempt. On October 21, 1981, Pierre Michel was assassinated in Marseille by three parabellum bullets. A murder of professionals.
For several months, the magistrate has known that he is threatened. He regularly receives boxes of matches in the shape of a coffin. But he doesn't care. The death of Judge Renaud in 1975? An old story. The executions of Italian judges? A mafia tradition that cannot touch Marseille. Here, the environment has rules. The godfathers never touched the judges. This is part of the Old Port law tables. Those established by the Guérini clan at the start of the reign of Gaston Defferre. However, since 1974, the Marseille underworld has been in crisis. She has just suffered the full brunt of the dismantling of the French Connection.
It is in this difficult context that Pierre Michel, a young law professor, arrives in Marseille. He has just completed an internship with Parisian judge René Saurel, a specialist in drug trafficking cases. He discovered the world of junkies and drug dealers. The end of hell. From now on, Pierre Michel will lead a merciless crusade against the drug bigwigs. He will do it patiently. His method? Carefully reconstruct the networks of the white goods trade. A real work of an archivist. It classifies all the wholesale suppliers from the Middle East, the Mafia godfathers and the French chemists, unemployed since the end of the French connection and who sell their know-how to the men of the Onorata Societa.
The young magistrate goes to Palermo to investigate. And returns with the certainty that a new godfather is taking over Marseille. His name is Gaean Zampa, known as “Tany”. He has a reputation as a killer and is said to be “from the Mafia in the Old Port”. While the judge builds his case, Zampa builds a small empire in the Marseille nightlife. He buys nightclub after nightclub. With money from heroin trafficking? This is Judge Michel's thesis. He can't sleep. Better still, he often hides entire nights in front of Tany's clubs to succeed in confusing him.
When, during the summer of 1980, two clandestine laboratories were discovered in Italy, Pierre Michel believed he could succeed. Among the men arrested, there are seven French people including André Bousquet, known as “the Doctor”, a close friend of Zampa. The judge exults. He leaves immediately for Palermo where he learns that the Mafia, a little too closely monitored in Italy, has just relaunched labs in France. Through the Zampa clan? This is what Michel believes. He becomes more and more nervous, leads the searches himself, harasses the Marseille thugs. In the bars of the Opera district, a mecca of the scene, he is nicknamed “le Frapadingue” [the Crazy]. We are starting to criticize his unorthodox methods, his arrogance. He is compared to Judge Renaud, assassinated in Lyon in 1975. Lawyers tremble at the idea of entering his office. Audience incidents are increasing. The intellectual has become a sheriff. In the courtyard of Baumettes prison, the thugs he has locked up are worried. How far does he want to go? A lawyer now on the run, Mr. Fraticelli, even offers him 100,000 francs to relieve the pressure on one of his clients. The judge bursts out laughing. An inmate warns him by mail that a contract has just been ordered against him? H edoesn't not answer. “He was an educated bullfighter,” said one of his friends. He danced with death. »
However, on July 8, 1981, his stubbornness finally paid off. That day, he himself took part in a raid on a clandestine laboratory in a villa in Saint-Maximin, near Marseille. He's the one who runs the operation. Like a cop. Results of the operation: a seizure of ten kilos of morphine base, seven kilos of heroin and eight arrests, all former guys of the French Connection. Among them, Marc Chambault. At his home, the PJ discovers a crucial piece of evidence for Judge Michel: a small crumpled sheet of paper on which is written the name of Zampa and the telephone number of a bar which serves as the Marseille boss' headquarters. This time, the impetuous judge sees his victory. To pay Zampa, he needs Marc Chambault's confession. He will therefore question him but not before October 22. Beforehand, he must tie his file and further clarify some gray areas. At the end of the summer, at the beginning of October, he received a final visit from two Italian magistrates specializing in the fight against the Mafia. His file is closed. He will be able to strike at the top of the drug industry. Marc Chambault will help him. He promised it to her in prison, outside of proceedings. On October 21, the day before the official interrogation of the chemist, Pierre Michel was assassinated by two killers on motorcycles.
Seven years later, the scenario of the judge's death has been roughly reconstructed. The killers would be François Checchi and Charles Alfieri, two little thugs from the Endoume district, in Marseille. The sponsors? Two notables from the Old Port underworld, incarcerated by Judge Michel for drug trafficking, Homère Filippi and François Girard, known as “the Blond”. Several witnesses recognized that the duo of Baumettes had ordered the assassination of the judge from prison. One day, François Girard, leaving the judge's office, blurted out to a police officer frightened: “This judge is crazy! He is going to die. » Seven years of investigation to conclude that it was a simple neighborhood vendetta? A banal story of bad mood of two hateful thugs? Today, most of those involved in the assassination fiercely deny it. The witnesses to load have retracted. Omerta also exists on the Canebière. Those who could have spoken were murdered. Marc Chambault, old timer of the mob, did not speak. And Gaetan Zampa died in prison in 1985, taking all his secrets with him. Like the Michel affair, Zampa died "suffocated"... It is before a heavy enigma that the jurors of the Aix-en-Provence Assize Court will find themselves, on June 16 and 17. Gaëtan Zampa had sworn to Commissioner Lucien Aimé-Blanc that he had never ordered the execution of Judge Michel. On the contrary. He knew this murder meant the end of an era. That of principled thugs. A few months later, in fact, Marseille became the city of all dangers. The gangs launched into a bloody war. For the control of the white powder trade. Fifty deaths from 1982 to 1985! If Zampa didn't lie, who else had an interest in killing the missionary judge?
SERGE RAFFY
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Le Nouvel Observateur, May 17, 1989
The return of the French Connection
We thought she was dead. Dismantled thanks to the concerted action of the French and American police. Thrown into oblivion by the Marseille mob. Wrong! It took the arrest and confession of a little thug promoted to boss of the French industry, François Scapula, to discover the truth: in drug trafficking, the French are everywhere. In Thailand, Colombia, Lebanon, they are the most wanted associates of the American Mafia. Exclusive information, from police and judicial sources... and testimonies from traffickers made it possible to produce this file
Every morning, he does a little gymnastics. He reads the newspapers and dreams of another life. In his comfortable cell, somewhere in Switzerland, he already imagines himself an American citizen. What will it be called? John Smith, Tom Callaway, or Francis Kennedy? He hasn't decided yet. What face will the surgeon give him? Curly blond with raised cheekbones and an aquiline nose, the one the Marseille mob nicknamed François le Brun?
At 44, François Scapula is impatient to step into someone else's shoes. We understand it. In January 1987, he testified in New York, trial of the Benevento brothers, the godfathers of the American Mafia. He said everything. Everything American justice wanted to know about one of the most
largest trafficking networks ever formed in the history of drugs. The Benevento brothers, heirs of Lucky Luciano [No comment...], did not expect the “betrayal” of the little Frenchman. In front of stunned police officers, François Scapula did not break down. For three and a half years, he has been vegetating in a Swiss prison and waiting for the American government to obtain his extradition. This is the contract that his lawyers signed with the Drug Enforcement Administration, the DEA, the American drug enforcement agency.
What were we promised him? Freedom somewhere in the United States, under another identity, with a new face. In the contract, it is stipulated that the American authorities undertake to find him work, to guarantee his security and the “right to happiness”…
Since then, he has lived in anguish. He's waiting for the Mafia killers. The Swiss authorities change his penitentiary every four months, to prevent any preparation for assassination. Detained under a false identity, François Scapula lives like a hunted man. A man on the run behind bars, who falls asleep in fear, saying to himself: “Tonight, they are going to shoot me. ". Who distrusts everything. Of his food, of his guards, of his lawyers, of the judges who come to question him. Cops, too. How did this man get to this point? How did a little thug from Marseille, a gambler and a handsome guy, gain access to the very closed circle of major drug traffickers? And above all, how did it allow the French and American police to discover that the famous French Connection, which we thought was definitively dismantled in the mid-1970s, is still active?
Marseille, 1960s. A young apprentice heating engineer from the Endoume district dreams of the heist of the century, of a good life in the Bahamas. He frequents local bars with his friend çois Girard. The two men do not leave each other's side, chasing girls and playing football at US Endoume. Scapula is funny, seductive, a Latin lover type. Girard is blond and taciturn. From the age of 15, they robbed bank branches together and stole cars. The classic trajectory of the ordinary thug. They could have moved up to the category of pimps, led a little life like "julots", played at the racetrack from the Prado to take trips to Juan-les-Pins or Cannes. But in the Endoume district, at that time, young thugs lived in the mythology of the godfathers. They have idols. Those of the French Connection. Corsican kingpins who deal as equals with the leaders of the Sicilian Mafia to supply the American market of Drugs. Their names are Mémé Guérini, Dominique Venturi, Marcel Francisi.
François Scapula, at the age of 20, discovered the murky world of gunpowder. And his “cooks”, Paul Brandhuys, Grégoire Leccia or Edouard Tou dayan. They all have the appearance of a quiet father, straight family lives like Boulevard Michelet and criminal records, murky like the waters of the Old Port. Above all, they have what American gangsters call the «French Touch». Their master: Jo Cesari. Former cabin boy at Messageries maritimes. he would have received the “secret” of manufacturing heroin from an old, half-mad scientist, a regular at the girls' bars in Pigalle [In fact the journalist is confusing here with Dominique Albertini who is Cesari's half-brother]. Legend ? In any case, she pleases the young thugs of Endoume who have a real veneration for old Jo Cesari. Small, timid, almost insignificant, Jo has everything of the meticulous and needy little laboratory assistant. But, in the community, it is considered like a genius. “He made gold from opium,” quips a Marseille police officer.
Old Jo, financed by Mémé Guérini, launches the “French school” of chemists of death. He sets up laboratories almost everywhere in the surroundings of Marseille. In garages equipped with dryers, thermostatic ovens, vacuum pumps, laboratory glassware, sieves, he manipulates the ingredients of "his" sauce: acetic anhydride, bicarbonate of soda, hydrochloric acid, alcohol, animal black, acetone... And a brownish paste imported from Lebanon or Türkiye, the morphine base, it makes 97% pure heroin. His reputation quickly became international. Around him, people wonder. How does he do? The Americans, the Sicilians, the Lebanese tried to refine it themselves. They only get mediocre heroin, 60 or 70%, what the Americans call “brown sugar”. Even the CNRS chemists, with Cesari's recipe, will not do better than 67%! The secret of “old”? Reaching the melting point of the dough, 229 degrees, at a good pace “You have to have an eye and not rush things,” said Jo Cesari. Later, François Scapula would say: “It is like bouillabaisse [a culinary specialty of Marseille], you have to have the trick. »
To check the quality of his cooking, Jo practices what he calls “caudal erection”, a technique that his students perpetuate today. He injects a mouse with a dose of heroin. If death occurs after four minutes and the mouse's tail stands up, the heroin is good. With his know-how, Jo Cesari will earn a colossal fortune working for what narcotics police call the Palermo-Marseille-Miami triangle.
Arrested in 1972, he was 56 years old and knew what awaited him: twenty years in the penitentiary. Legend has it that during a walk in Baumettes prison, he met a drug addict for the first time in his life... For Mr. Jo, it was a shock. He realizes the harm he has done [Total bullshit fabricated for the article]. Does he feel remorse when thinking about the hundreds of kilos of heroin he has refined over the course of his career? He hangs himself a few days later.
The ghost of Jo Cesari has never left Marseille. François Scapula, fascinated, took the plunge in 1971 and hired his services to André Labay [for information he was not a mobster], head of one of the biggest networks of the French Connection. He then only plays the role of courier. But these are times of repression. The United States, overwhelmed by Mafia drugs, refined in France, declares total war on the big traffickers. Prison sentences are increased and police resources increased tenfold. And above all, we try to attract repentant people, “snitches”. The Americans will find one. Richard Bérdin, arrested on September 23, 1970.
Scapula knows him well. He’s a tough guy [actually, not really]. He was part of the Labay network and often came to Endoume to talk about his travels around the world. We listened religiously to him explaining drug networks. He knew everything about the “buytzk baba”, these godfathers of the Turkish Mafia who collected opium from the peasants north of Istanbul, about the Sicilian buyers who transported the morphine base to Palermo or Corsica, about the ten laboratories which were constantly running in Marseille, and on deliveries to New York, via the Caribbean. Berdin knew everything.
He said everything. Thanks to him, the French and American police were able, at the end of 1972, to dismantle the French Connection, in particular the Labay network, himself captured with 106 kilos of heroin hidden in a Volkswagen. In exchange for his knowledge, Berdin changes his identity, his face and lives in the United States, somewhere in total clandestinity. Among the victims of Berdin the Libra, François Scapula, the youngster of Endoume sentenced to five years in prison, who does not understand. With his friends, he then said: “Berdin, we will find him one day…”
The prediction came true, sixteen years later. In the freezing atmosphere of a prison, Fribourg, Switzerland. A few months earlier, inNovember 1985, Scapula and several gangsters are caught in the nets of the Swiss police, French and American, while they were preparing to leave for the United States around ten kilos of heroin, refined in a chalet, Paccots. Scapula with back to the wall. In France, he was sentenced to thirty-five years in prison by default. In Switzerland, he faces twenty years. And as much in the USA. He knows that he is condemned to finish his life behind bars. What to do ? Respect omerta, the law of silence in the environment? Hope for a escape ?
When DEA agents came to see him in Friborg at the end of 1985 to offer him benefitsof the status of witness, he thinks back to Berdin, well on. Where is he ? Can he meet him? Yes, him we answer. But it will be a bit long. " For organize the slightest meeting with a repentant person, says Carlo Boccia, head of the antenna of the DEA in Paris we need at least one months, for absolute security. The Mafia doesn't joke with those who have decided not to play in our camp. We take huge precautions. Example: a guy like Berdin, I don't know anything about him or where he lives. I only know that he requested surgery aesthetic. As soon as he finishes testifying, he is handled by a specialized FBI service responsible for witness protection. None DEA man doesn't know where the repentants are that they treated.»
Under heavy police surveillance, Berdin comes in Switzerland and speaks to Scapula. Yes, he is still alive. Yes, the Americans kept their word. He has not no longer the same face, but it still has the same voice. The one who recounted the journeys from Lebanon to Bahamas. Berdin was able to escape the vengeance of the Mafia. And Scapula? The Department of Justice American undertakes by contract to protect his life. After a second meeting with the one he had nevertheless sworn to kill, Scapula decides to talk « Today the laboratories of French chemists can be in Lebanon in Sicily, in the United States…". US government lawyers make him sign a formal contract. In three parties. The first, on the exemption total legal proceedings. The second on security and finding a job. Third concerns the psychological monitoring of repented. A man who changes his skin, sentenced to death by the Mafia, needs a moral support.
Taken into confidence, Scapula recounts his life in front of DEA tape recorders. He reveals that in 1984 he worked for the Benevento brothers, Ernie and Ernie, their first names, in a laboratory, in Chandler, near Phoenix, Arizona. Little by little, over the course of the confessions, the magistrates who questioned him reconstructed the puzzle of a gigantic traffic network drug. It strangely resembles that of the French Connection. Twenty years later. Still the Palermo-Marseille-Miami triangle. “There is still a difference,” says Bernard Gravet, boss of OCRTIS (Office central of Repression of illicit traffic in narcotics). Today, the laboratories of French chemists are no longer in Marseille. They may be in Lebanon, Sicily, India, United States, Switzerland.»
So what did Scapula reveal to her confessors? After the end of the French Connection, in the 70s, Americans turn to Asia to stock up on heroin. The French, put on the sidelines, are forgotten. But, very quickly, the relations between the American Cosa Nostra and the Triads, the secret societies of the Chinese Hong Kong becomes stormy. A war bloody conflict between the two groups. new York becomes Chicago [Never heard of that before, probably just a rumor]. Families count their dead. “The American Mafia has never worked in confidence with the Chinese. They are too much culturally distant, says Carlo Boccia. But to satisfy the demand for heroin - quality, number four, the purest, you need them best refiners: either the Asians or the French.»
The French ? At the beginning of the 1980s, a second generation of chemists was being born in Endoume. A group united around Scapula and Girard. They also found the pearl rare, Philippe Wiesgril, a former confectioner at unemployment. He's the new Mr. Jo. We nicknamed "the Hybrid", because he was not born in the mob, he learned the profession by chance: in the villa next to his lives Paul Brandhuyt, a quiet man who travels many abroad. The two men bond of friendship. Very quickly, the idle confectioner leaves for Lebanon and learns, under the guidance of his friend
Paul, the alchemy of dope.
From 1979 to 1984, Scapula and Wiesgril visited frequently in Lebanon, in the plain of Bekaa. They work in quasi-official laboratories, controlled by the Syrian army. “We were installed in military camps, will tell Wiesgril to a judge. One day, the guy who was working with me, Raffanelli, wanted at all costs to tele- call her friend in Spain. But we did not have not allowed to telephone. Unbeknownst to the Syrians, he used an army field telephone: I him. said: "You're crazy, we're going to get spotted by the Israeli air force or the Syrians will shoot us."
True ? Fake ? In any case, the “campaign Lebanese » transforms the Scapula clan into a gang of high flying. Gone is the little gang of thugs from Endoume. Now we live in palaces. Money is flowing freely. Scapula takes a liking to African safaris. When, in 1984, the American Mafia sends a sort of SOS to Marseille: “Desperate search for French chemistsment", to Paul Mondoloni, former lieutenant of Mémé Guérini, immediately think of the group of Scapula. They worked in Lebanon, but also in the Parisian suburbs, in Montreuil, for the account of Gaetan Zampa, in Thailand where Scapula narrowly escaped a dragnet policeman, for the Sicilian Mafia, in Palermo, where one of their friends, André Bousquet, a pediatrician high roller who became a “chemist” to pay his gambling debts, was arrested by Judge Falcone. The case in Marseille was treated by judge Michel.
After a few months of hesitation, the brothers Benevento hire the Scapula team for a operation. Code name: "Phoenix". Scapula, in his Swiss prison, will describe it in detail to police officers. His version: somewhere on a coast Turkish a small rental sailboat, with its on board Michel Régnier, Toulon thug, recovered father 350 kilos of morphine-original base will go. Michel Régnier is a expecrienced skipper. After a stage in Marseille where he transfers the drugs onto his own sailboat, “ka Puce”, Régnier leaves for the Bahamas. Featured team of professional smugglers, on board several outboards, takes the goods on a quiet beach in West Palm Beach, Florida. Cars then transport the “parcel” in a house, in Chandler, near Phoenix.
This is where the French chemists come in François Scapula and Charles Altieri, a another child from Endoume. Philippe Wiesgril abstained. “In the United States,” he said, “we risks the death penalty for these things!" At end of the chain, 150 kilos of pure heroin are resold on the New York market. Profit for the Benevento clan: one million dollars per kilo. In Türkiye, morphine base had been bought for 15,000 dollars per kilo. The salary of the two French people for this operation high risk? Nearly $2 million. Not bad. “it must be said that the quality of French chemists is essential for the Mafia, specifies a magistrate. No more heroin or cocaine is pure, the more resellers can cut the doses and therefore increase sales. This is the history of the multiplication of loaves…"
Satisfied with the work of the “little French people”, the Benevento offer an operation for more large scale. The coup of the century. Refining of a ton of morphine base from Pakistan. But, this time, far from the United States. Because the DEA would have ended up spotting the traffic. We choose India. Philippe Wiesgril, under the identity of Michel Benedetto, is sent to New Delhi check the quality of the goods. Francis Scapula is tasked with finding a laboratory. The Beneventos advances them a million dollars. The business of death could have lasted a long time.time. It was discontinued on November 2, 1985.
That day, Scapula' accompanied by a person swimming nicknamed “the Messiah” must fly away from Geneva to New Delhi. “The Messiah” is a marginal from the mob. India specialist, large lover of Hindu philosophy, he must serve as guide to the Marseille thug. At the airport of Geneva, Scapula is convinced that he is being followed. He decides not to leave and take refuge in a mountain chalet, near Fribourg, where its friend Alfieri “turns”, according to the expression of themob, ten kilos of heroin.
Bad luck: the Swiss police had been monitoring this chalet for several days. It is the endfrom the Scapula saga. And the beginning of confessions of a lonely thug. The magistrates who questioned him agent, the Swiss judge, André Piller, the judge Michel Debacq, are stunned. François Scapula opens the middle book wide. In bulk, he accuses his best friend, his childhood mate, François Girard, for having sponsored the assassination of Judge Michel. It also gives one of the godfathers of the Marseille community, Francis Vanverberghe, known as Francis the Belgian, who would have sold to Benevento 22 kilos of Asian heroin. It allows to dismantle another network, nicknamed “Pizza Connection”, where we finds Palermitans, Marseillais, Israelis suspected of being agents of Mossad, and the Americans.
It is also thanks to him that arrested in 1988, in Mexico, three former members of the French Connection, still in service, Jean-Claude Kella, Jean Orsoni and François Orsini. Thethree men had just introduced 700 kilos of cocaine in the United States, for the Colombian cartel
from Medelin Finally, the last big catch related to revelations of the “repentant” Scapula, that of William Perrin, arrested last October in the Dutch part of the island of Saint-Martin, in the Caribbean. This high-flying French thug transported more than $3 million in liquid. The drug came from Thailand and was transported via Corsica. Francis the Belgian, William Perrin, in prison. Black series for white sellers. Faced with this avalanche of cases, the Italian judge Giovanni Falcone moves up Marseille to compare its files with those of Judge Debacq. The two magistrates are well forced to accept the obvious: the French are always at the heart of international traffic. They are not only chemists but also not providers, intermediaries, etc. A whole network scattered in the four corners of the globe ready to functionner on a phone call. " Last month, we made a big seizure of heroin in Canada, says a DEA officer. The drug was Marseille, for sure. We recognize it sounds to color. » [I think this is the operation involving Vito Rizzuto, Raynald Desjardins and pilot Raymond Boulanger, who recently died in March of this year]
Despite Scapula's revelations, despite all these arrests, the “little hands”of the French continue their work. They are become salesmen of slow death. Recently, a Lebanese Forces activist, Marie El Laids, close to militia leader Samir Geagea, is arrested in Marseille with one kilo of heroin. French narcotics police are convinced that the powder comes from Christian mountains of Lebanon, where the leaders of clan continue to make chemists work French. Why deprive yourself of such “cooking”? deny”? Jo Cesari rarely left the Old Port and raised pigs. Their children travel by private jet and take suites in the palaces. François Scapula, he was the most talented of them, he is in a cell, somewhere leaves for Switzerland. He wonders when he will finally change skin. To save his own.
SERGE RAFFY
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Le Nouvel Observateur November 22, 1989
The Pizza Connection
Dozens of slow death sellers and chemists to be tried in Aix-en-Provence. Extremely rare case in the history of drugs, after two years investigation, the French, American and Italian police brought down an entire network
When the photographer triggered the device, his hand did not shake. He did its job. He was told that his “clients” were bigwigs drugs, international traffickers nationals. He imagined meetings secret in back rooms casino or in Miami villas. He expected to photograph men smoking heavy cigars in East Coast palaces. And he found in a metro entrance in the southern district of New York, its telephotolens trained on quiet fathers, ordinary people chatting in complete peace. Thus, the men of The Mafia, the heroin dealers, are they them? The DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) photographer, the American control agency against drug trafficking, does not believe in it. However, when his colleague passes by small group and opens his umbrella, according to the intended sign of recognition, he no longer has doubt. He has, a few meters from him, the organizers of one of the largest inter-networks National History of Drugs. On the photo (which we publish) [will published it next to the article] is GiuSeppe Scarpulla, godfather of the Mafia Palermo, Rodolfo Di Pisa, also Sicilian but living in Marseille, and Bernard Benhamou, Israeli, specialized in conveying of drugs, a courier", according to the expression of the mob. What are they doing in New York? The first seeks markets for sell Italian wine. The second has a inheritance problem with a first cousin hand not found. The third is sightseeing. This is, of course, not the font version French, American and Italian, who led together, from 1984 to 1986, one of the most astonishing investigations into a network that today is called the “Pizza Connection”. A file of eighteen volumes, thousands of hours of spinning, hundreds of photos, one hundred and twenty cassettes of two hours of telephone tapping put in place between New York, Palermo and Marseille, the famous triangle of “white power sellers”. The case goes be judged by the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal from November 20 to December 2. In the box, there will have relaxed fathers from the Old Port,repentants, adventurers, an ex-drug addict and some ghosts.
“This affair is fascinating,” says a Parisian magistrate, because it allowed reconstitute an entire network, which is extremely rare. Generally, we corner a smuggler, sometimes a distributor. But never again. the traffickers which today are remarkably organized. They put in place structures
vertical, of the type of those of the Resistance. They work in small, tight groups. A little like terrorists. The soldiers do not know never their leader. To bring down a network, it takes a lot of patience and a little luck». The helping hand of destiny, the police go benefit one day in December 1984. When they learn from the American consulate in Marseille that one of their old acquaintances, Rodolfo Di Pisa, manager of Biscuiterie de Provence in Marseille, goes to New York. Di Pisa, alias “Aldo”, is a relative of the famous chef of a Palermo mafia family, Calcedonio Di Pisa, assassinated in 1962. Upon his arrival at the airport Kennedy, on December 14, DEA agents on are being shadowed. It's the start of a long game of track in the streets of the American capital. Di Pisa, as a good Catholic, visits regularly in the high place of US Catholicism, the imposing St. Patrick's Cathedral, on Fifth Avenue. On the square, he meets Giuseppe Scarpulla, considered the head of the Misilmeri clan, municipality of the suburbs of Palermo, Frederic De Vito, representative of the Mafia in New York, and Bernard Benhamou, French-Israeli pied-noir [=French-Jewsih community in Algeria] Jew link.
For American policemen, it is clear that they live what they call a “passage”, in other words a transaction. Their scenario? Di Pisa, the Marseillais, is there to sell heroin on the American market. Giuseppe Scarpulla serves as guarantor for his cousin De Vito, the buyer. And Benhamou is the representative conveyors, those who take the risks of pass the drugs. In the event that a conveyor is stopped, traffic organizers undertake to pay for his defense and feed his family during his incarceration. The contract is oral, but generally respected.
All these men see each other several times, in restaurants, in the metro. After having contacted the Italians and the French, Ronald Provencher, one of the thinking heads of the DEA New Yorker, is convinced that he is dealing with “big fish”. In agreement with Marseille and Rome, he decides to let them go to go back the sector. “What mattered then says an agent of the DEA, it was to know the financial circuit and the place of heroin refining. However, if the Marseillais were themselves the sellers, we could think they had reopened one or several laboratories in France. » Fantasy? A few days later, Rodolfo Di Pisa leaves in Marseille with a large blue suitcase. Special feature: it has a double bottom. At the airport Kennedy, Provencher and his men intercept the suitcase after check-in. Inside, they discover 75,000 dollars in banknotes 100 dollars and very large traces of heroin quality. For Provencher, this is proof that “white powder was treated by Marseillais”. Then memories of the French resurface Connection and its famous chemist Jo Cesari, pig breeder and great handler of stills outside of his working hours. Jo Cesari, dead in prison, trained a whole generation of chemists of death. He had a “white hand”, delivered a 97% pure product and raised his children according to the rules of Catholic morality. Joe Cesari would have liked St. Patrick's Cathedral.
But he never traveled. Ilne carried no blue suitcase full of notes whose numbers lead to a Barclays subsidiary Bank of New York. This company had whitewashed 2 million dollars in three years thanks to complicity of the director of the establishment, Michael Zuckermann, fired, by his management central. in the greatest discretion. Two million dollars t This time, Provencher and his men are sure to be in on a huge deal.“To know the weight of heroin introduced into United States through this network, says a police officer in charge narcotics at the SRPJ in Marseille, it is necessary know that a kilo of good quality is sold $150,000. Therefore, the Di Pisa network has introduced sheds nearly 70 kilos in three years on the ground American. " How ? To find out, the cops Americans are waiting for Di Pisa to return to USA. On January 15, 1985, the Marseillais goes to a small commercial port nearby from Miami, Port Everglades, where he meets Israel Saadia, Israeli sailor from the Zim company Marseilles. His cargo came from Haifa, Israel, and made a stopover at... Fos-sur-Mer, where Saadia recovered father a package containing six kilos of heroin to Miami. For investigators, the trail of Marseille laboratories are confirmed. The agents of the DEA then finds itself faced with a choice tactic: arrest Saadia and lose track of the suppliers, therefore laboratories, or continue the spinning mills. Finally, they opt for first solution: kick in the antbind.
Result: the interception of the Port Everglades causes real panic in the Marseille mob. Nearly $1 million just went up in smoke. A disaster for the thugs of the Old Port. How are we going to pay suppliers, sellers, carriers? Under the control of the Marseille investigating judge Michel Debacq, the French police officers put on listens to many suspects. Their harvest is more than abundant. They gradually learn that one of those responsible for the traffic would be Mario Piazza, honorable restaurateur in the district of «Abattoirs» lover of pétanque, football and beef ribs. French of Sicilian origin, born in... Misilmeri, in the suburbs of Palermo, the municipality of Giuseppe Scarpulla. Mario Piazza is the cousin of Scarpulla's wife's brother. This which is not nothing. In the families of Misilmeri, we never forget our parents. Especially when they are in trouble. And Mario Piazza, according to the listenings collected by Judge Giovanni Falcone, in Palerm, is in a bad situation. In a coded language, he explains to his “cousin” Palermo that the “cousins” of New York are furious after the failure of Port Everglades, that they want to pay more than Israeli smugglers demand their salary. In short, the Marseillais are in the mouse. They need to get back confidence of the financiers of Cosa Nostra. There solution ? Take new “trips”. And quick. On June 7, 1986, Di Pisa telephoned line public booth in New York where a “cousin” of De Vito. According to the judge, Di Pisa, coded language, asks his interlocutor for a advance of $400,000 for a delivery of 5 kilos of heroin. "You know why I'm telling you ask for that?, continues Di Pisa. Because they have need to do two or three times..., so as to recover what they lost here. Because if it is quickly, he can stay here because there is the house and in two weeks, we should be able to do all three transport. » Translation for the uninitiated: it is necessary make three deliveries of heroin, because we have achemist on site. The police then no longer the slightest doubt: the “house” that Di Pisa speaks of, damn but it's of course, it's the laboratory, installed near Marseille. Di Pisa insists: “The house is there, house is there. " But where ?
The Marseille police officers, for more than a year, tried everything to locate the “factory of death”. In vain. After several night-time shadowings in the countrysideof Aix-en-Provence, they ended up give up all hope. However, by searching the home of Di Pisa, they were still dreaming: in his garage, several chemicals used to purify the heroin were found. We also went up the chain of Israeli smugglers-links, led by Joseph Regwan, young adventurer laughing living from palace to palace, son of the dean of Tel Aviv University, suspected of being a Mossad agent. We also found the suppliers of morphine base, a Turk of Armenian origin, Gilbert Sirinpinar, and especially a 53-year-old Iranian, Iraj Sadeghi, son of a lawyer from Tehran, considered to be the great negotiator of the Turkish Mafia which controls the opium fields of the Anatolian plateau. A man of great culture, speaking fluently speaks Turkish, Armenian and Arabic, Sadeghi is a Luxury salesman for opium producers, but above all an essential intermediary for all the Mafias in the world. Before the magistrats, he remains courteous, delicate, but does not understand Not what he is accused of. He only remembers one thing: to be an honest fabric seller. And if a few thugs came out of the brown dough in a Persian carpet leaving for Marseille, it is without his knowledge. Finally, after some two years of investigation, French, Italian and American cops decide to launch a vast dragnet on the “Pizza Cormection” network, nicknamed so quite simply because some members of the organization are restaurateurs. Fifty arrests between Palermo, New York and Marseille. It is this high-flying network that the court of appeal of Aix-en-Provence will judge. With some notably absent: the chemists, Jo Cesari’s childs, those who go to the laboratory as we go in church, devotees of acetic anhydride, vacuum pump, Doctors Strangelove of death slow. «This case allowed us to understand the new techniques of the Mafia: mobility and speed. We only pass small quantities of drugs, by plane or by boat. The labs change all the time. We are in a world of speed. The thugs have adapted,
like everyone»
Marseille, in a bar in the Opera district, a man remembers the standoff between him the police and the thugs for more than three years. When the city, from 1983 to 1987, once again became the hub of all traffic and that, in full of gang wars, Canebière was a cemetery for gangsters: «The bosses never had been so hot, he said. The cops were never so close to the big traffic bosses. They waited a few months and they came back up to the leaders»Who is he talking about? From the “Panzone”, known as “the Ventru”, André Manoukian, discreet and good-natured man, living peacefully located in a peaceful area. Considered as the heir of Paul Mondoloni, the correspondent of the Mafia in Marseille, nicknamed the «Wild Boar of Sartène» and who ended his life in a puddle of blood during a game of bridge in July 1985. André Manoukian, like many of his friends, had signed a petition against drug dealers Opera district, in Marseille. In New York, the “cousins” from Palermo sometimes come to meditate read in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral. They pray for the “cousins” of Marseille…
SERGE RAFFY
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Le nouvel Observateur, May 17 , 1989
Interview with Judge Falcone: An exclusive interview with the boss of the anti-Mafia fight
Family secrets
In Palermo, Marcelle Padovani met judge Giovanni Falcone. He talks about the French Connection, pentiti, the role of honorable society in international traffic. Explosive
Still the same armored life. The same tortuous corridors of the palacejustice of Palermo. The same cameras flush. The same blinding spots. The same two television screens which, from his office, monitor the movements of the ground floor and those of the first floor. It's him himself, Judge Giovanni Falcone, 49 years old, ten years of this bunker life, which controls the opening of the doors. He chose to fight against the Mafia on all fronts, and even by making himself impregnable. Always on his guards but always calm, cold as a snake, often laughing and self-ironic behind his fine mustache, the man who made more of 500 mafiosi, including the main bosses of onorata società, visibly has the conscience calm. Even if the clouds gather over her head.
N.O. - According to the investigation by “ Le Nouvel Observateur", we are witnessing a renaissance of French Connection...
Giovanni Falcone. - This is not a surprise for me. My investigation, carried out in collaboration with Judge Debacq, in Marseille, and which ended in 1986, led to the indictment of a number of Palermitans and Marseillais. We especially found Marseille of Armenians who, with Kurds from
Türkiye, were engaged in trafficking arms and narcotics. The presence of heroin was noted poorly refined from Türkiye and that Marseille chemists completed their purification. Of the skillful people, and who ensured the export of heroin to the United States by addressing Sicilians. Because, if we can do without the Sicilians for supply and refining, it is not not possible for the deposit. The characters discovered then had already been condemned, Scapula, Piazza Mariano... I don't know if today's chemists are the descendants of their ancestors from the 60s. I am sure in any case that the main one of them, Bousquet, who has been locked up since 1979 in the Ucciardone prison, is no longer able to teach anything to anyone.
N.O. - What role does the Sicilian Mafia play in the new triangle being reconstructed: Marseille, Palermo, New York?
G. Falcone. - We are witnessing in Italy a frightening increase in the number of deaths by drugs: 70 per month. And to a double phenomenos: the strong increase in the presence of cocaine, without heroin decreasing on its side. He thus appears more and more clearly that the heroin and cocaine markets add and that a system of exchange between the two drugs, therefore between the two supply networks sioning, is currently being carried out. That said, Sicily as a distribution, halfway between the Far East and the United States, seems to have lost a little of its importance, if we are to believe the American investigators: we would be witnessing, according to them, a fall in participation in the heroin market. It would have fallen from 30 to 5%. All this in no way means that the Sicilian Mafia is not more interested in traffic. On the contrary. This wants say that she pays major attention to it... By example, one might believe that a loading of heroin left from Thailand, passed through the England and Canada to end up in the United States, avoided the Sicilian Mafia stage. It's wrong. Cosa Nostra is very present, but more discreet. It has diversified its activities and itsmen at the international level, and we can even say, in my opinion, that its presence is more
strong.
N.O. - And American Cosa Nostra?
G. Falcone. - Officially, as gold- organization, it does not deal with drug trafficking, leaving this activity to a very small number of families. In the United States, we are witnessing the increasing role of groups of Chinese criminals, who are able to ensure the entry of heroin into the land
American. But once again, the appport of the Sicilian Mafia remains decisive for distribution.
N.O. - The heroin's routes are changing...
G. Falcone. - Yes, we tend more and more more on the world market to buy from poorly refined heroin (rather than morphine base) directly into the producing countries: Thailand, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran. It's an opera profitable for traffickers because it allows you to skip steps, avoid difficulties: double mail, the purchase of intermediate products, laboratories, etc.
N.O. - Did the investigation you carried out in collaboration with the Americans on the Pizza Connection dismantlepart of the network on American soil?
G. Falcone. - The Pizza Connection was a very important investigation, I should say: historical. Because we put in clearly the traffic channels and those of recycling of narco-dollars, as well as interested families. With the operation which we carried out at the end of 1988 under the name "Iron Tower", we have confirmed that the characters in question are the same, that the channels are more sophisticated, and above all there are a notable exchange of merchandise (heroin against cocaine), which will inevitably lead tofurther collaboration and rationalization largest of the two markets.
N.O. - Many experts believe that drug money will flow more easily Europe in 1993, with the removal of barrierscustoms regulations and the free movement of capital. What do you think ?
G. Falcone. - That may be partly true. 1993 will make it more difficult to locate capital illicit. But are Lives restrictions of the past have been used until now to contain recycling? Thee answer is no. Clandestine channels have worked wonderfully. So maybe the liberalization of borders will lead to more great physical presence of traffickers and recyclers, but for capital, I don't see a big difference. It is in any case a deadline that must be faced by increasing the professionalism of investigators not in dreaming of setting up other legal barriers. It is as if we wanted to prohibit the circulation of TIR [?] trucks because sometimes they are used for transportation of heroin...
N.O. - How is the presence of mafia capital in banks, insurance companies or in companiesfinancial?
G. Falcone. - It is necessary, to launch the slightest nvestigation, to initially have a precise trace, and well sure to be very professionally prepared. We must absolutely avoid the technique of someone who throw a net in a lake and wait to see what it takes. I repeat: a clue and technics proven are the condition for success. As for the channels chosen by illegal money, the situation is evolving. In the past, we dealt with organizations that managed all forms of dirty money (prostitution, drug trafficking, arms sales, kidnapping of people). These organizations have become open to investigation. I think today dirty money is reinvested through characters from the financial world, people totally devoid of prejudices — which explains the fabulous and improvised enrichments targeted by certain financial figures national and international. This new phenomenon leads requires international collaboration that allows us to reconstruct the origin of wealth of these people.
N.O. - What are the sectors where the money dirty going ?
G. Falcone. - They change, I told you. Because that, as soon as one of them is the subject of an investigation, he abandons his activity, and the money goes to other sectors. Bankers readily say that "money has the heart of the rabbit and the legs of the Hare ". He runs, he runs... When I arrive in a financial company, the hare has already escaped. The standards issued by the Basel Committee in 1988 allowed a moralization of the sector banking. The bankers were the first to realized that the old adage "money has no of smell" was not true and that the passages of illicit capital was ultimately only a little productive for the economy. The real sector where he happening now? That of intermediaries financial and para-banking.
N.O. - How to compete at European level these apparently uncontrolled financial flow?
G. Falcone. - Beyond the collaboration of polices, you have to be able to define a space European judicial system. This assumes a harmonization of standards for differents country. Switzerland is currently doing great efforts, with the introduction into its Penal Code for the offense of recycling. There German legislation is effective, the British even more so. As for Italy, we have an excellent law, the law Rognoni-La Torre which was very helpful to “freeze” goods and properties belonging to convicted mafiosi for criminal association. This law will be extended to the offense of recycling: this are the suspects who will have to prove that their property has a lawful origin. This is what we call “the reversalment of the burden of proof”.
N.O. - To fight against drugs, and against illicit recycling, does collaboration between governmentsenough? Wouldn't it also be necessary to collaboration of people?
G. Falcone. - Demagogic question to which I can only respond with yes. In fact, joking aside, he
should take the offer (the drug traffickers) and demand (consumers), by reducing the no longer possible this second one. Because we can achieve, thanks to international collaboration nationally, with beautiful concrete results, for example by sequestering loads of.drug. But do you know that each sequestration of heroin raises its price on the marketconsumers?
N.O. -The role of repentants, national and international, like Buscetta, in Italy, or Scapula, the French, is often crucial indrug investigations. However, they pose many problems...
G. Falcone. - The first problem is that of their credibility. It is necessary to scrupulously check their testimony. As regards the “management” of repentants—it’s actually a word which I don't like because it implies a connotation moral — we must establish rules that allow you to decide freely on the behavior they wish to have at the moment ment of the trial. They need to feel liberated of the conditioning of the organization to the which they belong. They must be able demand their rights, those that the law allows every citizen. It is only by protecting those who collaborate (the so-called “repentants”) and their families that they will be able to collaborate. American legislation is exemplary in this regard: it is said that it succeeds in protecting there are around 1,500 people, including the repentant and their loved ones. It would have to be adapted to the characteristics of our European judicial systems,by setting up an international collaboration national whose aim would be protection. For lack ofwhat this irreplaceable instrument of investigation mafia that is the repentant risks disappearing.
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Here is the surveillance photo with Scarpulla, Di Pisa & Benhamou, I assume the man on the left is the Fed with the umbrella
