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Canadian police bust Italian mafia drug group, arrest 19

Xinhua, June 4, 2015 Adjust font size:

A total of 19 members of an Italian mafia drug ring have been apprehended in the Toronto area, Canadian police said Wednesday.

Two Canadian cells of the international mafia organization known as the 'Ndrangheta were hit by police raids Tuesday, the culmination of a two-year probe aimed at toppling the group's stranglehold at the top of the criminal food chain in Ontario, said the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) at a news briefing in Toronto.

Guns, drugs, cash and vehicles were seized by police as they executed 25 search warrants early Tuesday morning. At the same time, 19 high-ranking men were arrested including two bosses of two separate clans of the organization, police said.

Those arrested are believed to have connections with the ' Ndrangheta criminal organization based in Calabria, Italy, officers said.

"There's no doubt in the investigators' minds that the level of violence that these people were prepared to conduct and exercise in that kind of activity would include homicide," RCMP Supt. Keith Finn told reporters.

The raids were conducted in Vaughan, Ontario, and the Toronto neighborhood of Etobicoke at approximately 5:30 a.m. The Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit (CFSEU), made up of Toronto-area forces and RCMP officers, dismantled two alleged organized crime cells police say were involved in importing drugs, trafficking firearms, "extreme violence" and extortion.

Police said the "key cells" were part of a crime family targeted in a two-year investigation. Finn said the cells had been "significantly dented" by the arrests.

On Tuesday, Giuseppe "Pino" Ursino, 62, was arrested at his home in Bradford, Ontario, in a dawn raid by police. He has direct connection to the leadership in Calabria of the 'Ndrangheta clan of the same name.

The 19 arrested, aged 26 to 66, are charged with a variety of related crimes, including conspiracy and trafficking of marijuana and cocaine.

"The challenges in this investigation are to peel back those layers to expose for the court and for the Canadian public exactly how it is they conduct their criminal enterprise," Finn said.

The joint-force police probe penetrated unusually deep into the highly secretive organization, mapping its hierarchy and structure, which could signal trouble ahead for the wider organization, burrowed into the Toronto area since the 1950s. Endite