Salvatore "Sal the Ironworker" Montagna, the former acting boss of the Bonanno crime family who was deported by the United States to his native Canada in 2009, was whacked yesterday in Montreal, QB Canada as reported by The Gazette.
Montagna "was found shot to death in the shallows of L’Assomption River, just off the northeastern tip of Montreal" as reported by Les Perreaux for The Globe and Mail: "it appears Mr. Montagna fled on foot into the river before collapsing from gunshot wounds. Within minutes, police officers dragged him from the water and tried to resuscitate him."
The Bonanno family from NYC has deep long-time ties with the Rizzuto family in Montreal, and reputed Montreal boss Vito Rizzuto currently is serving time at the supermax facility in Florence, CO on a 2007 racketeering conviction involving the 1981 New York City murders of three Bonanno capos during an internal power struggle.
When Vito gets out of the pokey in October 2012 he'll face a changed landscape.
Over the last few years several Rizzuto clan members and associates -- including patriarch Nicolo Rizzuto and his grandson Nick Rizzuto Jr. -- have been slain.
One theory put forward to explain the ongoing blood bath is that the Calabrian Mafia is attempting to wrest control from the Sicilian Mafia over the Montreal underworld. The police also believe that Montagna was pushing to become the top dog among the Sicilians. To further complicate matters some sources believe that Montagna had allied himself with the Calabrian clans in Ontario and NYC.
It's unknown at this time whether Montagna was whacked by the Calabrians or his own paisanos.
Montagna was known in Montreal for shaking down contractors for five percent of their profits, and the alleged corruption of the construction industry by the Montreal Mafia and dirty politicians is the subject of both an ongoing criminal investigation and public inquiry. Last September a government-commissioned report concluded that organized crime was obtaining public contracts in a bid rigging scheme which provided kickbacks to government officials in the form of campaign contributions.
Michael Virtuoso, a Brooklyn butcher charged last July by the feds as a Bonanno loanshark, allegedly "saved newspaper clippings from Montagna's deportation proceedings" as reported by Mitchel Maddux and Tim Perone for the New York Post.
It's funny because the ongoing Mafia war in Montreal inevitably will spill over onto the streets of New York City, and yet there is very little that the FBI can do about it because earlier this year the agency inexplicably dismantled most of its resources to target the wise guys.
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