Mafia Runs Fulton Fish Market, U.S. Says in Suit to Take Control
By ARNOLD H. LUBASCH
Published: October 16, 1987

LEAD: Federal prosecutors filed a lawsuit yesterday seeking to seize control of the Fulton Fish Market in lower Manhattan, declaring that it is dominated by the Mafia.

Federal prosecutors filed a lawsuit yesterday seeking to seize control of the Fulton Fish Market in lower Manhattan, declaring that it is dominated by the Mafia.

In an attempt to expand use of Federal racketeering laws, the civil suit asked a Federal court to appoint supervisors to oversee the operations of the busy market and its main union, United Seafood Workers Local 359 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, A.F.L.-C.I.O.

The prosecutors, asserting that fish prices were driven up by racketeering, said the suit described both the market and the union as ''captive organizations of the Genovese crime family.''

Several telephone calls to the offices of the seafood union and the market's association of employers failed to reach anyone yesterday for comment on the suit.

It is the first time the Government has filed a racketeering suit to put ''an entire commercial center under court supervision,'' according to Rudolph W. Giuliani, the United States Attorney in Manhattan. He said that only three other suits seeking court supervision of unions had been filed in the country. Koch's Friend

At a news conference to announce the suit, Mayor Koch said he had initiated the investigation three years ago when a friend who operates a fish restaurant told him of being required to make payoffs at the market.

The Mayor said he had taken the complaint to top officials of the Police Department, which joined with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in an inquiry that culminated in the suit.

While he declined to name the friend who owns the restaurant, the Mayor suggested that a measure of the suit's success might be, ''Will he reduce the cost of fish on his menu?''

The suit was described by Thomas Sheer, the head of the F.B.I. office in New York, as a major investigative effort that could be ''a blueprint for the future.''

''What we hope to do,'' Mr. Sheer added, ''is return our economy to our society and leave the Mafia like a fish out of water, flopping on the shore.'' 'A New Tactic'

Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward read an excerpt from an article in The New York Times about efforts to clean up the Fulton Fish Market. He added, amid laughter, that the article was printed in 1934. ''Now,'' he said, ''we are going to try a new tactic.''

Shortly after the suit was filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Judge Lee P. Gagliardi signed an order temporarily restraining the union from destroying any records. The prosecutors handling the case, Randy M. Mastro and Edward T. Ferguson, said a hearing on the suit was set for Oct. 26.

The market, which supplies fish in a region extending from Boston to Washington, includes about 100 wholesale seafood companies in a series of shops and warehouses in the South Street Seaport area along the East River. The companies belong to an employers association that handles collective bargaining with Local 359.

The 43-page suit described the market as ''the center of New York's wholesale seafood industry and source of most of the fresh seafood sold in the New York metropolitan area.'' 'Several Billion Pounds of Fish'

Each year,according to the suit,approximately one billion pounds of seafood pass through the Fulton Fish Market. Ultimately, that seafood is distributed to consumers in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and other parts of the United States.

Trucks delivering fish to the market arrive during the night and are unloaded by union crews, the suit said. The fish is taken to wholesale stalls, where buyers for retail stores and restaurants make their purchases from about 3 A.M. to 8 A.M.

The suit said that because ''fish is a perishable commodity,'' speed was essential, giving the union power to extort payments by threatening to delay the operation.

Besides extortion and labor payoffs, the suit said, the market area was riddled with thefts, illegal gambling and loan-sharking, as well as threats of violence, including murder.

The suit asks the court to appoint administrators to oversee the market's operation, with the powers necessary to ''prevent acts of racketeering activity from occurring at the Fulton Fish Market.'' It also asks for the appointment of trustees to ''supervise the daily affairs'' of Local 359 and its welfare and pension funds until supervised elections are held. Defendants Named

The defendants named in the suit include Local 359, its pension and welfare funds, along with their officers, the market's employers' association and ''the Genovese Organized Crime Family of La Cosa Nostra.''

''The Genovese family has controlled the Fulton Fish Market and Local 359 since the 1930's,'' according to the suit. It said they were run in the 1970's by Carmine Romano, a Genovese member now serving a 12-year prison sentence for racketeering. He was convicted in 1981 with his twin brother, Peter, who received an 18-month sentence.

The suit charged that another brother, Vincent Romano, ''currently runs the Fulton Fish Market for the Genovese family'' and that he reports to Thomas Contaldo, identified in the suit as a captain in the crime family.

''Anthony Cirillo, the nominal president of Local 359, was handpicked by the Genovese family for that office in 1983 and ran for office unopposed,'' the suit continued. It portrayed Vincent Romano as ''the de facto head of Local 359.'' Previous Conviction

The suit seeks to enjoin the three Romano brothers, Mr. Contaldo, Mr. Cirillo and more than 20 others from participating in the affairs of the union and the market.

In 1980, the union was indicted by a Federal grand jury in Manhattan on charges of obtaining $65,000 in labor payoffs from 46 wholesale fish companies in the market. The union was convicted and fined $200,000.

At the news conference yesterday, Mr. Giuliani said organized crime controlled the fish market ''primarily through its control of the union.'' He predicted that the suit would establish a mechanism to rid the market of the worst aspects of organized crime in a few years.

The Government is using civil suits under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act to attack the economic power of organized crime, Mr. Giuliani said. He added that more criminal cases might be filed involving the fish market.

The three previous suits to control unions, he said, involved Local 560 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in New Jersey, Local 6A and the District Council of Cement and Concrete Workers in New York, and Local 814 of the Teamsters in a recent Brooklyn case focusing on the Bonanno crime family.

All the cases were in the New York metropolitan region, he said, because it is ''the focal point of organized-crime activity.''