Top mobster faces extradition to Italy

Canoe Saturday, April 12, 2003 By CP

TORONTO -- Convicted mobster Alfonso Caruana is facing the possibility of more jail time after Italy filed a request for his extradition.

Already serving an 18-year sentence for running what authorities called one of the largest drug-smuggling rings in the world, Caruana was slapped yesterday with an extradition request from Italy, where he's been convicted in absentia of mob association and conspiracy and sentenced to 21 years.

Caruana was arrested yesterday morning at Fenbrook Institution near Gravenhurst, Ont., and brought to a Toronto courthouse. The case was put over until April 24.

Patrick Charette, a spokesman for the federal Justice Department, said the Italian government now has 45 days to forward its case for extradition, after which the department will have another 30 days to consider it. If the minister of justice approves the request, the case will then go before a judge, Charette said.

Caruana and three relatives pleaded guilty in 2000 to operating the sprawling Cuntrera-Caruana crime family, described at the time as the most powerful Mafia drug clan in the world.

BILLION-DOLLAR DRUG OPERATION

The family left Sicily in the 1960s and set up shop in Venezuela, where they rapidly assembled a billion-dollar drug operation capable of shipping heroin, cocaine and hashish by the tonne.

They later moved to Montreal, where members would make bank deposits with hockey bags of cash, before shifting headquarters to a quiet home in Woodbridge, Ont., near Toronto.