Mafia

[Rasputin]

The Yakuza Godfathers Part IV

In 1972 Kodama brokered a historic pact between the Yamaguchi-gumi and Tokyo's powerful Inagawa-kai. The deal was sealed at Taoka's home in a traditional sakazuki ceremony in which blood brotherhood was sworn over elaborately poured cups of sake. After the sake was consumed, the empty ceremonial cups were wrapped in paper and put away inside the representatives' kimonos. The men then clasped one another's hands, and a go-between declared the ceremony completed. The Yamaguchi-Inagawa alliance created a yakuza behemoth with only four of Japan's prefectures free of their control.

In July 1978, at the age of 65, Taoka survived an attempt on his life. He was enjoying a limbo performance at the Bel Ami nightclub in historic Kyoto when a young man named Kiyoshi Narumi walked up to the godfather's table, pulled out a .38-caliber pistol, and started shooting. Despite the presence of five bodyguards, Taoka was hit in the neck, and the assassin managed to escape. Taoka was rushed to the hospital in his bulletproof black Cadillac.

Narumi was a member of the Matsuda syndicate, whose boss had previously been killed in a s***mish with the Yamaguchi-gumi. Several members of the Matsuda gang, including Narumi, had eaten their oyabun's ashes, vowing to avenge his murder. Taoka eventually recovered from his gunshot wound, but his attacker was found dead several weeks later in the woods near Kobe.

Three years later Taoka succumbed to a heart attack. His funeral was a grand affair attended by high-ranking Yamaguchi-gumi members from all over the country, as well as a number of well-known celebrity entertainers. Thirteen hundred police officers were on hand to maintain order. The National Police Agency took advantage of the customary three-month mourning period and arrested 900 Yamaguchi-gumi members in the hope of weakening the gang after the godfather's death. Taoka had chosen a successor before he died, a man named Yakamen, but he was in prison at the time of Taoka's death. In the chaos created by the power void, Taoka's widow Fumiko grabbed the reigns and prevented a divisive power struggle within the gang. She was mainly a figurehead, as one would expect in a male-dominated society, but her strong presence nevertheless maintained order until a permanent successor was selected.

[Rasputin]

The Yakuza Godfathers Part V

The Korean yakuza are a powerful presence in Japan, despite the fact that Koreans suffer discrimination in Japanese society. Although Japanese-born people of Korean ancestry are a significant segment of the Japanese population, they are still considered resident aliens. But Koreans, who are often shunned in legitimate trades, are embraced by the Japanese yakuza precisely because they fit the group's "outsider" image. The man who paved the way for Koreans in Japanese organized crime was the Korean yakuza godfather Hisayuki Machii.

Born Chong Gwon Yong in 1923 in Japanese-occupied Korea, Machii was an ambitious street hood who saw opportunity in Japan and seized it. After the Japanese surrender, Machii worked with the United States Counter Intelligence Corps, which valued his staunch anticommunist beliefs. While leaders of the Japanese yakuza were imprisoned or under close scrutiny by the American occupying forces, the Korean yakuza were free to take over the lucrative black markets. But rather than trying to rival the Japanese godfathers, Machii made alliances with them, and throughout his career, he remained close to both Kodama and Taoka.


In 1948 Machii established the Tosei-kai (Voice of the East Gang) and soon took over Tokyo's Ginza district, the Times Square of Japan's capital. The Tosei-kai became so powerful in Tokyo that they were known as the "Ginza police," and even the Yamaguchi-gumi's all-powerful Taoka had to cut a deal with Machii to allow that group to operate in Tokyo. Machii's vast empire included tourism, entertainment, bars and restaurants, prostitution, and oil importing. He and Kodama made a fortune on real estate investments alone. More importantly, he brokered deals between the Korean government and the yakuza that allowed Japanese criminals to set up rackets in Korea, a country that had been victimized by the Japanese for many years. Thanks to Machii, Korea became the yakuza's home away from home. Befitting his role as fixer between the underworlds of both countries, Machii was allowed to acquire the largest ferry service between Shimanoseki, Japan, and Pusan, South Korea—the shortest route between the two countries.

In the mid-1960s, pressure from the police forced Machii to officially disband the Tosei-kai. He formed two supposedly legitimate organizations around this time, the Towa Sogo Kigyo (East Asia Enterprises Company) and Towa Yuai Jigyo Kumiai (East Asia Friendship Enterprises Association), which became fronts for his criminal activities. He was widely believed to have helped the Korean Central Intelligence Agency kidnap then-leading Korean opposition leader Kim Dae Jung from a Tokyo hotel. Kim was whisked out to sea where he was bound, gagged, blindfolded and fitted with weights so that his body would never surface. The execution by drowning was abruptly cancelled when aircraft buzzed the ship, and Kim was mysteriously delivered to his neighborhood in Seoul. American intervention is said to have saved his life. A police investigation revealed that Machii's people had rented every other room on the floor of the hotel where Kim had been staying, but Machii was never charged with any crime in connection with kidnapping. Machii "retired" in his 80s and was frequently seen vacationing in Hawaii.

[Rasputin]

Russian Mafia


The Russian Mafia is a name given to various groups of organized criminals in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. They are seen to be very influential.

The Russian Mafia appears to be organized in similar ways to the legendary Italian mafia. However it is believed to be a very loose organization with internal feuds and murders, which are often brutal, being commonplace.

Despite seeming to arise during the Fall of the Soviet Union, organized crime had existed throughout the Imperial and Communist eras as a form of open rebellion against the systems in the form of the "Thief's World". During this time they were fiercely honor based and often attacked and killed traitors among their ranks. Nevertheless, during World War II, many enlisted in the Russian Army resulting in the Suka Wars which killed many of the thieves who were branded as government allies as well as the original thief underworld during Stalin's reign. The criminals, seeking a new survival strategy, began to ally with the elite in the Soviet Union as a means of survival, creating a powerful Russian black market.

Despite the Kremlin's attempts to reform, the criminals continued to grow in power. Nevertheless, the real breakthrough for criminal organizations occurred during the economic disaster of the 1990s that followed the fall of the Soviet Union. Desperate for money, many former government workers turned to crime and the Mafia became a natural extension of this trend. According to official estimates, some 100,000 Russians are hard-core mobsters, with a large, but unknown number engaging in these criminal practices on and off.

Many of the bosses and main members of the Russian mafia are believed to be ex-Soviet Army and ex-KGB officers who lost their posts in the reduction of forces that began in 1993 after the end of the Cold War. It is also believed that many of the groups' enforcers are ex-Russian Spetsnaz special forces, an organisation renowned for its brutality. Russian mob recruited a lot of sportsmen - boxers and other martial artists, and weightlifters, as funding for sports had decreased sharply, and they could offer decent income to strong men.

Since the mid-90s the Russians have been trying to expand into America, most often via the trafficking of drugs and illegal weapons. This has led to some brutal wars with the organizations already present, including the Italian Mafia and the Japanese Yakuza. The group is believed to have links to Colombian drug smugglers and many smaller gangs as a result of the fall of the Soviet Union. Some also believe they are at the heart of gangs smuggling illegal workers west to the European Union and often Britain, though no proof has been offered for this at the time.

Over the last few years, the FBI and Russian security services have cracked down hard on the Mafia, though the impact of this has yet to be measured. Many mafioso have become rich in America and have begun to imitate the Italian Mafia in lifestyle. This has led to the apparent softening of the mafia, though in reality they may well be as dangerous as ever.

The term Russian Mafia is considered offensive by many ethnic Russians, since a large percentage of the alleged "Russian" mafiosi, especially in the United States, claim to be ethnic Jews from the former Soviet Union. Due to strong anti-semitic feelings in parts of Russia, many Russians do not feel that Jews are authentically Russian. In fact, the Russian mafia is sometimes described as "the Russian mafia, made up of Jews and Chechens". The predominance of Jewish-identifying Russian mobsters can be explained by the fact that many immigrants from the former Soviet Union were ethnic Jews. However, it should also be noted that many Russian gangsters claim Jewish descent in order to get an Israeli passport, as the activities of the Russian mafia are particularly concentrated there - by one 1998 estimate, the Russian mafia had put some $4 billion into the Israeli economy. The former Soviet Republics of Georgia, the Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, Belarus, and Moldova have their own mafias, with extensive links to the mafia of Russia.

Some Russians tend to deny the existence of the Russian Mafia, claiming it to be a thing of the past and that it has considerably decreased in influence since the 90's. This is not a proven fact, and the potential for dangerous activity by the Russian organized crime continues to be high. The Russian Mafia is claimed to control a very large portion of the Russian economy, and this is a very difficult control to remove. The Russian government has done better in recent years in repressing organized crime since the chaotic 90's years, and it looks like the mafia's power is on the verge of diminishing.

The oligarchs such as Khodorkovsky and Berezovsky and other prominent Russian Families of Jewish ethnicity such as the Litvinoffs, have all had alleged links with the Russian Mafia.

[Rasputin]

John Roselli

John "Handsome Johnny" Rosselli (July 4, 1905 - August 9, 1976) had been an very influential Mafia soldier, one who had helped to control Hollywood and Las Vegas for the Chicago Mafia and who had been deeply involved with the CIA plots to kill Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in the early 1960s.

Born Filippo Sacco in Esperia, Italy on July 4, 1905, he had been best known by his mob nickname of "Handsome Johnny." Sacco had immigrated with his family from Italy to the USA in 1911, settling in Boston, Massachusetts. Fleeing to Chicago in 1922 after committing a murder, Sacco had shortly afterward changed his name to "John Rosselli" (in honor of Italian Renaissance sculptor Domenico Rosselli) and became a Mafia member, working for Al Capone. In 1925, an asthmatic Rosselli had been ordered by Capone to relocate from Chicago to Los Angeles after jumping bail on a federal narcotics arrest. Rosselli began his California criminal career working with Los Angeles mobster Jack Dragna. By the late 1930s, the shrewd and charismatic Rosselli had overtaken the ineffective Dragna in power and influence, leading the Chicago mob's multimillion-dollar extortion of the motion-picture industry after his close friend, film producer Bryan Foy, brought him into the movie business as a producer with Foy's small production company, Eagle Lion Studios.

In 1942, Rosselli had been indicted on federal labor racketeering charges along with George Browne, former president of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees union, and Willie Bioff, labor racketeer and former pimp. After a yearlong trial, Rosselli had been convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison, but had served only three, being paroled in 1946 thanks to the influence of the Chicago mob's political fixer, Murray "The Camel" Humphries had with President Harry Truman's Attorney General Tom C. Clark and immediately returning to his highly-profitable Hollywood extortion operations. The extensive influence the Chicago Mafia had over Hollywood is best illustrated in 1948 when Chicago Mafia boss Tony Accardo had told Rosselli to force powerful Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn into signing then-unknown actress Marilyn Monroe to a lucrative multi-year contract. The usually highly combative Cohn quickly complied without opposition, mainly because Cohn had obtained control of Columbia through mob funds and influence provided by both Accardo and Rosselli.

In the early 1950s, Rosselli had gradually shifted his focus away from Hollywood and toward the nearby fast-growing and highly profitable wagering mecca, Las Vegas. By 1954, Rosselli had become the Chicago and Los Angeles mob's chief and most powerful representative Las Vegas, ensuring the mob bosses of of each city received their share of the burgeoning casino revenues.

In the wake of Fidel Castro's takeover of Cuba in January 1959, Rosselli and other powerful mobsters like Sam Giancana and Carlos Marcello had worked closely with senior CIA officer William Harvey and others in the notorious CIA plot called Operation Mongoose, targeting Castro for assassination, which despite millions of dollars and several years spent, had ultimately failed. Rosselli (who had specialized in spreading rumors and disinformation to divert suspicion away from the Mafia) is believed by some researchers to have been the chief source of the falsehood that Castro had been behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

In 1963, singer Frank Sinatra had sponsored Rosselli for membership in the exclusive Los Angeles Friar's Club. Soon after his acceptance, Rosselli had organized and overseen a major card-cheating operation, one that had lasted four years and bilked scores of wealthy men (including millionaire Harry Karl, the husband of actress Debbie Reynolds) out of millions of dollars. In 1968, Rosselli had been tried and convicted of illegal residence in the United States (he'd never acquired lawful US residence or citizenship) and had been ordered deported to Italy by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Italy refused to accept him, so Rosselli remained in the United States.

In June 1975, Rosselli had appeared before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence led by Idaho Senator Frank Church to testify about his knowledge of and connections with the CIA's ill-fated Operation Mongoose. Shortly after Rosselli had testified, the by-then disgraced former Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana had been shot and killed by an unknown assailant in the basement of his Oak Park, Illinois home days before he was to testify before that same committee, prompting Rosselli (whose weakening power base had finally disappeared with Giancana's death) to permanently leave Los Angeles and Las Vegas for Miami. Fourteen months later, on August 9, 1976, Rosselli's decomposing body had been found in a 55-gallon steel fuel drum floating in Dumfounding Bay, Florida. He'd been strangled and stabbed; his legs had been sawed off and stuffed into an empty oil drum along with the rest of his body. Many believe Rosselli had been ordered killed by Tampa, Florida mob boss Santos Trafficante because Trafficante had believed the aging Rosselli had talked too much about the Kennedy assassination and Castro murder plots during his Senate testimony, violating the strict Mafia code of omerta (silence.)

1990 - There are persistent rumors Rosselli and a pair of widely feared Chicago mob hitmen, Charles Nicoletti and Felix Alderisio, had actually fired the fatal shots killing President John F. Kennedy at Dallas’ Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.

[Rasputin]

Giovanni Brusca

Giovanni Brusca (born c1957) is a former member of the Sicilian Mafia. He once boasted that he had committed at least a hundred murders.

A short and chubby man, he was nicknamed Il Porco - "The Pig" - whilst others referred to him with the more ominous title of Il Macellaio - "The Butcher" - due to his savagery. One of his crimes was the murder of the 11-year-old boy Giuseppe Di Matteo, whose father Santino had become an informant. Brusca kidnapped the child and held him for over a year, torturing him and sending photographs of the injuries to the boy's father and telling him to stop co-operating with the police. Brusca eventually strangled the boy and flung his body into a vat of acid.

Brusca was a member of the Corleonisi Mafia Family, from the town of Corleone and his mentor was Salvatore Riina.

On May 20, 1996, then aged thirty-nine, Brusca was arrested at a restaurant where he was dining with his girlfriend and their young son. Brusca had received a life sentence the previous year after being convicted in absentia of murder and he was subsequently convicted of the bomb attack that killed the Anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone in the highway that connect the town of Palermo with Punta Raisi Airport, now called Falcone-Borsellino Airport

In 2004, it was reported that Busca was allowed out of prison once a week every forty-five days to see his family, a reward for his good behaviour as well as becoming an informant and co-operating with the authorities. Relatives of his many victims were understandably angry at such soft treatment for a multiple-killer.

[Rasputin]

Bernardo Provenzano

Bernardo Provenzano (born January 31, 1933) is a member of the Sicilian Mafia and is suspected of being the head of the Corleonisi, a Mafia Family from the town of Corleone.

In 1948, Provenzano was one of the gunmen who ambushed and shot to death Michele Navarra, who was then the head of the Corleonisi. The murder was ordered by Luciano Leggio who subsequently became the head of the Family. During a mafia war in the early 1960s, Provenzano went into hiding, fearing he would either be arrested or murdered. He married and fathered two sons whilst on the run.

Leggio went to prison for murder in 1974, effectively leaving Totò Riina in charge. Provenzano was suspected of being Riina's right-hand-man. Riina was incredibly ruthless and eventually started the Mafia war of 1981/82 which left over a thousand Mafiosi dead and resulted in the Corleonisi the dominant Mafia Family in Sicily. Provenzano was believed to operate behind the scenes, dealing with the financial side of the criminal enterprises he and Riina orchestrated, particularly heroin trafficking.

Toto Riina was arrested in January 1993 and subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment for ordering dozens of murders, including the two high-profile bombings that killed judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

Provenzano, who is believed to have taken over as head of the Corleonisi following Riina's arrest, has not been publicly seen since the early 1960s, and when his wife and children came out from hiding in 1992, many suspected that Provenzano was dead, from natural causes or otherwise.

On January 25, 2005, police raided various homes in Sicily and arrested forty-six Mafia suspects believed to be helping Provenzano elude the authorities. Although they did not catch the elusive Mafia boss himself, investigators nonetheless unearthed evidence that 72-year-old Provenzano is still very much alive.

Provenzano has been a fugitive from the law ever since his in absentia conviction for the killing of Michele Navarra on September 10, 1963 and it is theorised that he has been on the run longer than any other criminal, an unparalleled 42 years as of 2005.

According to mob godmother-turned-informant Giuseppina Vitale, Provenzano appeared at a 1992 Cosa Nostra summit meeting dressed in the purple robes of a Catholic bishop.

His nickname is Binnu u tratturi (the farm tractor) with an analogy to the Hun King Attila. There are proofs that he travelled recently to France, although been a fugitive, and underwent a surgical operation, even remboursed by the Italian National Health Care.

[Rasputin]

Tommaso Buscetta

Tommaso Buscetta (July 13, 1928 - April 4, 2000) was an Sicilian mafioso, and later repented. He was the first informant in the Italian pentiti witness protection program.

He was the last of seventeen children raised in a poverty stricken area of Palermo, which he escaped by getting involved with crime at a young age. He became a fully fledged member of the Mafia at the age of eighteen and worked as a hitman. In 1968, Buscetta was convicted of double-murder, but the conviction was in absentia as he was not actually in custody (it is possible in Italy for fugitives to be prosecuted without them being present).

Tommaso Buscetta fled the USA then down to Brazil where he set up a drug-trafficking network. In 1972 Buscetta was arrested and extradited to Italy where began his life-sentence for the earlier double-murder conviction. In 1980, whilst on a day-release from prison, he fled over to Brazil to hide out from the brewing Mafia War instigated by Toto Riina that subsequently lead to the deaths of many of Buscetta's allies in the Mafia, including Stefano Bontade. Arrested once more in 1982, Buscetta was sent back to Italy. He made a suicide attempt, and when that failed he decided that he was utterly disillusioned with the Mafia and the blood-thirsty treachery of people like Riina. Buscetta asked to talk to Giovanni Falcone and began his life as an informant.

His testimony in the New York "pizza connection" trial in the mid-1980s allowed the conviction of hundreds of mobsters in Italy and the United States, including Gaetano Badalamenti.

In Italy he helped the judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino to achieve significant successes in the fight against organised crime (the two judges were later both killed by Mafia). He was the star witness in the so-called Maxi Trials that lead to almost 350 Mafia members being sent to prison.

In retaliation, the Mafia killed fourteen of his relatives, including two sons and two nephews, in a revenge by proxy tactic often used against mafiosi who repent.

As a reward for his help, Buscetta was allowed to go and live in the USA under a new identity in the Witness Protection Program. He was reported to have undergone plastic surgery to conceal his identity. He sometimes gave interviews to journalists, although his face was pixelated when he appeared in documentaries, and in an interview with the Italian journalist Enzo Biagi, Buscetta cheerfully bragged that he lost his virginity at the age of eight to a prostitute who charged him just a bottle of olive oil. Buscetta married three times and had six children, and at one point he was briefly suspended from the Mafia for walking out on his first wife, adultery evidently being a greater crime than murder in the eyes of his fellow mobsters.

Judges and policemen found Buscetta to be very polite and intelligent, albeit sometimes prone to vanity. Occasionally Buscetta was somewhat economical with the truth, like any informant. He once claimed he had never dealt in narcotics even though he once contradicted himself by saying that everyone in the Mafia was involved in drugs, without exempting himself from this statement. Originally he denied ever killing anyone but later admitted in a television interview that he was a murderer. Some of his lies had understandable motives. In the 1980s he said he had no knowledge of the links that various politicians like Salvo Lima and Giulio Andreotti had with the Mafia, but in the 1990s he admitted that he knew of such links, claiming that he had feigned ignorance during the '80s because the politicians in question were then in power, and he had feared for his life even within the security afforded by the Witness Protection Program.

Buscetta died of natural causes in 2000, aged 71, having lived out his final years peacefully somewhere in the USA.

[Rasputin]

Giovanni Falcone

Giovanni Falcone, (May 18, 1939 – May 23, 1992), was an Italian judge who specialised in prosecuting mafia crimes.

His life story is quite similar to that of his closest friend Paolo Borsellino. Both shared provenance from a rather poor area of Palermo, had careers as Anti-mafia judges, and equally sad fates: both were killed (less than two months apart) in particularly audacious bomb attacks in 1992.

Falcone was one of the major organizers of the Maxi-Trials of the mid-1980s that saw hundreds of Mafiosi convicted of serious crimes. One of they most important factors in the trial was the testimony of Tommaso Buscetta, the first ever Sicilian Mafioso to become an informant. It was Falcone to whom Buscetta preferred to speak when giving up the secrets of the Mafia, as Buscetta later claimed that, whilst other judges and detectives patronized him, Falcone treated him with respect.

Falcone was killed with his wife Francesca Morvillo (herself a judge) and three policemen: Rocco Di Cillo, Antonio Montinaro, Vito Schifani, in Capaci on the motorway between Palermo International Airport and the city of Palermo on May 23, 1992. The car in which he was travelling was blown up by a bomb that had been placed under the asphalt of the road. When passing over the bomb, Falcone was driving his car at an estimated speed of nearly 160 km/h.

The murder was organized by Salvatore Riina in revenge for Falcone's conviction of dozens of mobsters in the Maxi-Trials. In the major crackdown against the Mafia following Falcone and Borsellino's deaths, Riina was arrested and is now serving life for sanctioning the murders of both judges as well as many other crimes. Another mafioso convicted of the murder of Falcone is Giovanni Brusca, one of Riina's associates who admitted to being the one who actually detonated the explosives.

Palermo airport is now also known by the name Falcone-Borsellino Airport in honour of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. A memorial by local sculptor Tommaso Geraci can be found there.

[Rasputin]

Top Mafia fugitive arrested in Czech Republic


ROME, Aug. 12 A top Mafia fugitive, who is wanted by Italian authorities for at least nine assassinations, has been arrested in the Czech Republic in an international police operation, local media reported on Friday.

Luigi Putrone, 45, who has been on the run since 1998 and on Italy's most wanted list, was arrested in the Czech town of Usti nad Labem, some 70 km north of Prague, ANSA news agency reported.

Other reports said he put up some minor resistance before being detained as he was driving out of the parking lot of a bakery in that town.

Putrone was jailed in Prague pending extradition to Italy. The Czech police said they are investigating whether he had links with organized crime in their country.

Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said Putrone's arrest is "another confirmation of the commitment of our law enforcement agencies engaged in an all-out war on organized crime."

Roberto Centaro, chairman of parliament's anti-Mafia commission, said Putrone's arrest "demonstrated the excellent cooperation among police forces in the European Union."

Putrone is believed to have been involved in various Mafia-linked murders and has been sentenced to two life terms. He had also been sentenced for the kidnapping of Giuseppe Di Matteo, a turncoat's son who was dissolved in acid in 1996 in one of the Mafia's most brutal recent crimes.

Italian police believe that there is likely to be a crime-related network in Germany's Italian community which offers help to the Mafia fugitives.

[Rasputin]

Frank Sinatra backstage in 1976 with top wiseguy admirers including Paul Castellano (standing left), Carlo Gambino (standing third from right) and Jimmy Fratianno (standing second from right).

[Michellica]

offff baba che gadr in Mafia ro tahvil migirin shomaha!kill'em all!

[horiyeh]

lol are tahvil nagirin poroo mishan

[Rasputin]

offff baba che gadr in Mafia ro tahvil migirin shomaha!kill'em all!

Kasi tahvil nemigireh 'Mafia' ro ! Is just a very intresting subject !

[Michellica]

Kasi tahvil nemigireh 'Mafia' ro ! Is just a very intresting subject !

i know aziz..it was only a quip

[Rasputin]

i know aziz..it was only a quip

My III Tesis in criminology was mafia .