https://www.corrieredellacalabria.it/2025/03/05/gli-effetti-dei-dazi-di-trump-sulla-ndrangheta/the scenario
The Effects of Trump's Tariffs on the 'Ndrangheta
From Siderno to Toronto: A Short Story of a Global Crime Central
Published: 05/03/2025 – 16:59
Will the tariff war unleashed by President Trump also have consequences on the business of the 'ndrangheta? Probably yes, and it is certain that the economic minds of the Calabrian clans in these hours are evaluating everything that is changing around the globe. Especially in Canada, a nation at the center of global drug routes and a territory of antagonism with the White House.
The latest news reports thirteen provinces (Canada is a federal state) that have joined together to respond to the trade war of their neighbors with measures that make the pouring and selling of American whiskey and bourbon much more expensive. Will there be a return to the past like the times of prohibition? For the moment on this front we are in the vicinity of the fant'ndrangheta.
Another issue is more likely. That of the goods that leave from the port of Montreal. Antonio Nicaso, an authority on Canadian mafias, declared two years ago to Fabio Benincasa of the Corriere della Calabria "whoever controls Montreal, controls the access point for cocaine in North America". Much revolves around the port front. The dust is hidden in various goods. If duties increase, as is likely, what consequences will this increase have on the most profitable market of the Calabrian-Canadian crime?
Will we have reconversions or just price increases to maintain revenues? We'll see.
While we try to understand the strategies, we still need to understand what the 'ndrangheta is in Canada?
For some time now, in our newspaper, I have been trying to unravel even in that distant latitude, trying to codify a long chain of bloody murders of Calabrians and also recounting the limits of Canadian legislation held back by broad guarantees in terms of anti-mafia legislation that has often allowed famous Calabrian bosses to get away with it in the land of the Red Coats, who are very busy with the work of repression.
I would like to point out a useful and well-documented book on the subject from the precious “Mafie” series distributed by the Gazzetta dello Sport , which has assigned the volume “Le mafie in Canada” to the young Calabrian researcher Eleonora Aragona .
The author, originally from Amantea, combines in her work the ability of a law researcher in Milan where she lives together with her already rich curriculum of free lance for various newspapers. The real added value is that Eleonora had an experience as editor-in-chief for the weekly “La Riviera” circumstance that allowed her to live in Siderno and surroundings. As is known Siderno is the capital referent of the Canadian criminal structures. The author Aragona therefore found herself in the privileged condition of connecting the data of the judicial orders with customs and people of the territory that she saw in her own habitat.
Eleonora Aragona offers us new nodes of knowledge of a map that is not always decipherable.
The first concerns a new anthropology of Canadian crime. Defined as “The milieu”. A cartel that combines Cosa Nostra, 'ndrangheta, Haitians, street gangs, Irish and Asians. At the top are the Sixth Families and the Siderno Group. It is not a Brancaleone army and the Calabrians and Sicilians are not opposed but mixed in wars and trafficking.
Siderno Group of Ontario has for example a very close link with the Hell's Angels (it is an ancient tribe of bikers already sadly known in the last century for having been the security service of the Rolling Stones concerts causing the death of a black boy by stabbing, an image immortalized in a documentary of the time). A
new contaminated fauna that of the Calabrians with the thugs on motorcycles. The results are always those of the globalized mafia.
The proceeds of the Canadian “milieu” are invested in Belize, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the money laundering has found good brokers in Swiss and German banks, but once upon a time it was different.
For the Canadian families, the person who paid copious amounts of money into an incriminated account at the Lugano branch of Credit Suisse, as ascertained by a Swiss investigator, was Mrs. Libertina Manno in Rizzuto, described by the detective as follows: «The woman wore her hair in a bun, she was a lady in her seventies, one of those elderly women you meet on the streets of the South, always dressed in mourning with a stern look».
The lady together with her accomplice operated on 14 bank accounts opened in 1988 declared as proceeds of income from agricultural and livestock activities undertaken in Venezuela. It all ended with 6 months of preventive prison in 1995 and two fines of 250,000 Swiss francs. A piece of a complex mosaic that Aragona hypothesizes in his work based on judicial investigations and that would see the Canadian Siderno Group as hegemonic in decisions on Calabria with a Crime that decides on the land of origin. It would be an absolute first. A novelty of enormous importance that we report only as a possible hypothesis but not certain.
Canada is certainly a key state for the contemporary 'ndrangheta that has ancient roots. As the story of Vincenzo Cotroni, son of a carpenter from Mammola, who arrived in 1925 at 15 years old, and who as an adult becomes the Bonnano's right-hand man in Montreal, tells us. Ethnic groups marginalized by the laws of the time and who take the social elevator as criminals.
Reading Eleonora Aragona's book seems like a movie. As in the reenactment of the murder of Pietro Sciarra with his wife killed on February 14, 1976,Valentine's Day, in memory of the massacre ordered by Al Capone in Chicago, at the exit of the Riviere cinema in Montreal. Film scheduled? The Godfather Part II by Francis Ford Coppola. Screen and reality that reflect each other together with the godfathers of Siderno. The new contemporary balances of the "milieu" according to investigative journalists and investigators still run between Buffalo and Toronto, only 160 kilometers away that you can cover in less than three hours with a bus that easily crosses the border. Buffalo is in the USA, the city of Giovanni Giuseppe Papalia called Johnny Pops , son of a smuggler from Delianuova who drew the criminal history of Canada and the USA.
Their descendants today must understand how to continue to command and make money. Trump's economic war to date does not seem to be very interested in these unknown narco-states governed by Calabrians. Better to conquer Greenland. (redazione@corrierecal.it)
