A Quebec lawyer with alleged mafia links has become a target of a joint probe by Canadian and Italian authorities into gangland murders in Sicily, a newspaper said Thursday.
The lawyer, who was not identified in the report, had been in frequent communication with both the victims and accused killers, “possibly acting as an intermediary,” said the daily National Post.
All four alleged mafiosos once lived in Canada and the murders were likely the transatlantic extension of a Montreal mob war, the paper said, citing unnamed sources.
Last month, Italian paramilitary police discovered the two charred bodies in Sicily of Italian-Canadian gangsters suspected of trafficking drugs to Canada who were being sought in a raid that netted 21 alleged mafiosi.
The two bodies were that of Juan Ramon Fernandez, 57, known as “Joe Bravo”, and Fernando Pimentel, 36, said the Carabinieri police. The bodies were riddled with around 30 gunshots.
They were suspected of trafficking heroin and oxycodone from Sicily to Canada together with a mafia clan based in Bagheria near Palermo.
The Carabinieri police said two mafia “men of honor” — the Bagheria-born Scaduto brothers, Salvatore and Pietro — had already been arrested as suspects in the murders.
Police think the order to kill Fernandez and Pimentel had come from Canada and was part of a turf war between two rival mafia bosses in Canada — the Vito Rizzuto mafia family and a new rebel faction led by Quebecois Raynald Desjardin.
“An order such (as) this could only come from someone of a high rank within the mob in Canada,” Lieutenant-Colonel Fabio Bottino, commander in Palermo of the Carabinieri paramilitary police unit, told the Post.
Fernandez — an alleged member of the Toronto-based Rizzuto family — was deported from Canada and moved to Bagheria after serving a 10-year prison sentence for extortion, drug trafficking and illegal possession of firearms.
Pimentel was also involved in organized crime in Toronto and had arrived in Sicily in March.
Canadian authorities declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.
Sicily mafia murder probe targets Quebec lawyer: report
