Friends of Ours

Former Football Club President Seeks Return

Tony Labbozzetta, the controversial former president of the soccer team Club Marconi in Sydney, Australia, is attempting a comeback bid as reported by Kate McClymont for The Sydney Morning Herald:

In 1999 he was banned for a year after a magistrate found that he had ''openly exploited the club to his own benefit on an ongoing basis.'' * * * Two members of the former football chief's family have alleged mafia involvement according to a confidential police report obtained by the Herald. The report names two of his relatives as suspected Mafia figures. His cousin, Frank, has been described as ''Il Capo'' in the South Australian Parliament. An investigation by The Age this year revealed that Mr Labbozzetta and the Sydney property developer Pat Sergi had lobbied Liberal politicians to prevent the Victorian mafia figure Francesco Madafferi being deported. Madafferi has since been charged with money laundering, drug importation and conspiracy to murder. Mr Sergi was named at the Woodward royal commission as being a principal in Robert Trimbole's Griffith drug syndicate. The late crime boss fled the country using an airline ticket in a false name obtained from the travel agency of Mr Labbozzetta's family. Mr Sergi and the head of Parramatta Eels, Roy Spagnolo, who are Club Marconi members, have been hitting the phones to muster support for Mr Labbozzetta's attempt to wrest control of the club from its president, Tony Campolongo, who is seeking re-election.

What's With Australia?

Pino Arlacchi, a former United Nations under-secretary for drug control, condemns the decision in 2005 by Australia's then immigration minister Amanda Vanstone to stop the deportation of reputed Calabrian Mafia figure Francesco Madafferi who was arrested down under on drug trafficking charges last August:

"It can only be explained as bad politics and low ethical standards," Mr Arlacchi told The Age. "You just have to push a button to access international archives. These are known (alleged) criminals; criminal activities (have been investigated) for decades." * * * Mr Arlacchi warned that the case could encourage mafia figures to seek entry to Australia. "I hope that the Australian public and the Government will wake up and seriously scrutinise people with criminal records who come there … you cannot fight organised crime if you allow them to move from country to country so easily."

Australian authorities are investigating whether Vanstone intervened on behalf of Madafferi in exchange for campaign contributions by the reputed gangster's family members to the Liberal Party.  Ironically, Vanstone is now Australia's ambassador to Italy.  Moreover, Italian anti-Mafia police question the Australian Federal Police's closure of its Rome office:

Italian authorities are calling on the Australian Government to increase co-operation between police in the two countries to combat the Mafia. The Rome bureau was closed in 2002 with little public discussion, despite the historical and continuing Italian Mafia presence in Australia. * * * The absence of an Australian liaison officer in Rome reduced the federal police's ability to lobby Italian authorities to push ahead with the extradition to Italy of several Australians — including Victorians Nicola Ciconte and Vincenzo Medici — over their alleged involvement in a conspiracy to import 500 kilograms of cocaine into Melbourne about six years ago. * * * The AFP's decision to leave Rome has baffled Italy's top anti-Mafia investigators. "We would like to resume much more intense collaboration, as in the past we had very positive experiences," said Vincenzo Macri, a senior investigator at the National Anti-Mafia Directorate in Rome. Mr Macri said the revelation of the massive ecstasy haul in 2007 had made clear the "shocking" extent of Calabrian organised crime in Australia. While applauding that drugs bust, he said Australian law enforcement agencies needed to "resume investigations on a vast scale" into the entire Mafia network in Australia. * * * Former United Nations undersecretary for drug control Pino Arlacchi said the AFP's decision to leave Rome was "quite bizarre." * * *  "The 'Ndrangheta (Calabrian Mafia) has 6000 people, with ramifications in more than 20 countries and strongholds in Bolivia, Colombia, Canada, Australia and Germany."

Although the current focus is on suspected mob corruption within Vanstone's Liberal Party, the country's Labor Party is in no position to throw stones:

Given Labor's connections with the people linked to the current allegations of cash for visas, it will be interesting to see how much pressure they can put on the Liberals. As one Liberal insider quipped this week: "Let them start throwing rocks because our files are bigger than theirs." 

Clive Small, a former NSW assistant police commissioner, and Tom Gilling are out with the new book Smack Express: How Organised Crime Got Hooked on Drugs which details the control of the illicit drug trade in Australia by the 'Ndrangheta or Calabrian Mafia and condemns both the overt corruption and willful ignorance that has allowed the mobsters to flourish over the decades in Australia.

 

Australia's Liberal Party Investigated For Mafia Ties

Australian police are investigating "claims that Mafia-linked businessmen donated about $100,000 to the Liberal Party in return for helping to keep an alleged Mafia figure in Australia":

Investigators were told a Liberal Party insider had revealed the party was to receive the money from businessmen in return for helping to get a visa for the alleged criminal, Francesco Madafferi, who faces drug trafficking charges after being arrested last August over the world's largest ecstasy bust. More than a dozen relatives or associates of Madafferi, including his brother, Antonio - a suspected Mafia boss - donated to the NSW Liberal Party between 2003 and mid-2006. In the same period, four Liberal MPs contacted the then immigration minister Amanda Vanstone about the case. Before she intervened in late 2005 to allow Madafferi to stay, he was due to be deported to Italy on the orders of the previous immigration minister, Philip Ruddock, because he was an illegal immigrant suspected of Mafia involvement. Six months after Ms Vanstone overturned the deportation order, relatives and associates of the Madafferi family, including Antonio Madafferi, donated at least $30,000 to the NSW Liberal Party. It appears the donations were made at a June 2006 charity function run by two businessmen, Pasquale "Pat" Sergi and Tony Labozzetta. * * * Mr Sergi, a Sydney property developer and charity director, was named in the Woodward royal commission in 1979 as a money launderer for the drug boss Robert Trimbole. A decade later several of Mr Labozzetta's relatives were named as suspected Mafia figures in a NSW police document.

Antonio Madafferi previously has been suspected of involvement in two murders although a court dismissed the report as not credible:

In 1992, when homicide detectives asked the fruitshop owner Antonio Madafferi what he thought of Liborio Benvenuto, the undisputed Mafia godfather of Melbourne, he replied: "A very good man. Very honest and he was respected everywhere." Madafferi also impressed upon the interviewing detectives that he, too, was a man of influence. "I am a man who is very respected at the market." * * *  In the early 1990s, Madafferi was twice named as a suspected hitman (allegations he denied and which were never corroborated) at the inquests into the murders of two greengrocers. In 1998 a senior officer from Victoria Police's organised crime squad wrote in a report that Antonio Madafferi was "involved in a substantial number of crimes, including murder, gunshot wounding and arson." The report was aired in 2000 at a court hearing involving Antonio's brother, Francesco, who was fighting a protracted battle with the Immigration Department over his impending deportation.  The police report, later dismissed by an Administrative Appeals Tribunal judge on the basis that it contained information from unnamed and possibly unreliable police informers, also alleged that both Antonio and Francesco belonged to a "crime family involved in blackmail, extortion and murder." The report also stated that: "If Francesco is allowed to remain in Australia, he will continue to carry out acts of violence on behalf of an organised criminal syndicate."

Clive Small, a former NSW assistant police commissioner, and Tom Gilling are out with the new book Smack Express: How Organised Crime Got Hooked on Drugs which details the control of the illicit drug trade in Australia by the 'Ndrangheta or Calabrian Mafia and condemns both the overt corruption and willful ignorance that has allowed the mobsters to flourish over the decades in Australia.