For four days, between October 12-16, 1957, American gangster Joseph Bonanno was allegedly attending a series of meetings between several high-level Sicilian mafia and Americans at the Grand Hotel des Palmes (Albergo delle Palme) in Palermo, Sicily - the most beautiful in town at the time. The so-called 1957 Palermo Mafia summit has become a legendary landmark in international illegal heroin trade in popular nonfiction mafia. The question is whether it ever happened. The details are still shrouded in mystery. According to some, one of the main topics on the agenda is the international heroin trade organization. The FBI believes it was a meeting that formed the family of Bonanno crimes in heroin trade.
Video Grand Hotel des Palmes Mafia meeting 1957
Pertemuan heroin?
The protagonist of this "heroin summit" legend is Claire Sterling's journalist: "Although there is no direct evidence of what happened at the four-day meeting itself, what has happened for the next thirty years has made the substance clear: the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic was persuaded by now that the American delegation asked Sicily to take over the import and distribution of heroin in the United States, and the Sicilians agreed. "However, he failed to support this claim with strong evidence. Sterling even has a date of alleged wrong meeting.
At the time, although the Sicilian Mafia was involved to some extent in the heroin business throughout the 1950s and 1960s, there was never anything more than a secondary role in the pharmaceutical system of the world. According to McClellan's Hearing, Sicily is nothing more than a staging post in French-produced heroin shipments to the United States. Until the 1970s, Sicilian mafiosi was prevented from obtaining any oligopoly in the heroin market because they were not competitive compared to other European criminal groups, particularly French Connection by Corsican groups in Marseille.
The first mention of the "summit" in the United States was during the McClellan Hearing on October 10-16, 1963. Among the American mafiosi present were Joe Bonanno, underbosses and advisers Carmine Galante, John Bonventre and Frank Garofalo, and Lucky Luciano, Saint Sorge, John Di Bella, Vito Vitale, and Gaspare Magaddino. While between Sicily there is Salvatore "Little Bird" Greco and his cousin Salvatore Greco, also known as "l'ingegnere" or "TotÃÆ'² il lungo", Giuseppe Genco Russo, Angelo La Barbera, Gaetano Badalamenti, Calcedonio di Pisa, Cesare Manzella and Tommaso Buscetta.
Maps Grand Hotel des Palmes Mafia meeting 1957
No first-hand account
There was no first-hand account of the meeting, except for the Mafia turncoat version of Tommaso Buscetta, which rejected the meeting ever held. According to Buscetta, the Bonanno stay at the Grand Hotel des Palmes and receive many guests at all times, but there is no such peak. In his memoirs, Joe Bonanno mentioned his trip to Palermo, but did not say anything about the summit.
According to Buscetta, a meeting took place in a private room at the SpanÃÆ'² seafood restaurant on the evening of October 12, 1957, in which Bonanno was praised as a guest of honor by his old friend Lucky Luciano. Among the other guests were Bonanno's underboss Carmine Galante, Salvatore's brother and Angelo La Barbera, Salvatore "Little Bird" Greco, Gaetano Badalamenti, Gioacchino Pennino, Cesare Manzella, Rosario Mancino, Filippo and Vincenzo Rimi, and Tommaso Buscetta. According to Buscetta, it was at this dinner that Bonanno advised to set up the Sicilian Mafia Commission to avoid violent disputes, following the example of the American Mafia who had established their Commission in the 1930s.
The Italian police had followed Luciano and thus knew about the meeting. They watched the meeting. However, the report was buried in several filing cabinets in Palermo. A copy was sent to the Federal Narcotics Bureau in Washington. Only eight years later the report was used to indict participants and some of their colleagues in Palermo.
Trial of participants
In August 1965, the Palermo public prosecutor charged 17 major participants associated with the Sicilian and American Mafia by judge Aldo Vigneri for criminal and drug conspiracies and currency rackets allegedly beginning with the 1957 Palermo Summit. Among the indictees were Bonanno, Bonventre, Galante, Sorge, Magaddino, John Priziola, Raffaele Quasarano, Frank Coppola and Joe Adonis. The Palermo Court rejected the allegations in June 1968 for lack of evidence.
What can be said about the events of October 1957 in Palermo is that they renewed the most numerous Sicilian relations of the Five American Families, the Family of the Bonanno Crime, and the most American Sicilian Mafia family. It was not a conference between the Sicilian Mafia and the American Cosa Nostra.
The heroin trade between these two groups may have been discussed, but of course there is no general agreement about the heroin trade between the Sicilian Mafia and the American Cosa Nostra.The important result of the 1957 meeting in Palermo was that the Sicilian Mafia composed the first Sicilian Mafia Commission and designate the "Little Bird" as the first "primus inter pares".
References
- (in Italian) Arlacchi, Pino (1994). Addio Cosa nostra: La vita di Tommaso Buscetta , Milan: Rizzoli ISBNÃ, 88-17-84299-0
- Arlacchi, Pino (1988). Mafia Business. Ethics of the Mafia and the Spirit of Capitalism , Oxford: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0-19-285197-7
- Bonanno, Joseph & amp; Sergio Lalli (1983). Gentleman. The Autobiography of a Godfather , London: AndrÃÆ'Â © Deutsch Ltd.
- Dickie, John (2004). Cosa Nostra. Sicilian Mafia History , London: Coronet ISBNÃ, 0-340-82435-2
- Gambetta, Diego (1993). The Sicilian Mafia: Personal Protection Business , London: Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-80742-1
- Shawcross, Team & amp; Martin Young (1987). Men Of Honor: The Confessions of Tommaso Buscetta , Collins ISBNÃ, 0-00-217589-4
- Sterling, Claire (1990). Octopus. How the long range of the Sicilian Mafia controls the global narcotics trade , New York: Simon & amp; Schuster, ISBN 0-671-73402-4
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments