Stefano Bontade - Cigarette Smuggling and Heroin Trafficking

Cigarette Smuggling and Heroin Trafficking

Bontade and other banished mafiosi managed to get into the market of international cigarette smuggling by imposing first their protection, and later their involvement, upon the smugglers in Naples (who were connected with the Camorra) and Palermo who had been running this activity since the 1950s. For instance, a thriving smuggler such as Nunzio La Mattina, was initiated into the Santa Maria di Gesù Family.

It was only through cigarette smuggling and subsequently heroin trafficking that many mafiosi were able to survive the difficult period after the Ciaculli Massacre. But then they started to accumulate large amounts of money rapidly. According to pentito Antonio Calderone, Bontade used to say that fortunately Tommaso Spadaro did a little bit of cigarette smuggling and gave him part of the profits, "because they were starving to death." (Spadaro was related to Bontade, being a godfather to one of his children.)

Bontade was closely linked to the Spatola-Inzerillo-Gambino network. This network and other Sicilian suppliers dominated heroin trafficking since the mid-1970s until the mid-1980s when US and Italian law enforcement were able to significantly reduce the heroin supply of the Sicilian Mafia (the so-called Pizza Connection). The Bontade-Spatola-Inzerillo traffickers supplied the Gambino Family – through John Gambino – in New York with heroin that was refined in laboratories on the island from Turkish morphine base. According to Giovanni Falcone, the investigating magistrate, the group had made about US$600 million. The proceeds were re-invested in real estate. Rosario Spatola, who in his youth peddled watered milk in the streets of Palermo, became Palermo’s largest building contractor and biggest taxpayer of Sicily.

The pentito Francesco Marino Mannoia, who belonged to the Santa Maria di Gesù Family and who was highly sought after by all Mafia families for his skills in chemistry, recalled having refined at least 1000 kilograms of heroin for Bontade. Marino Mannoia, who had been close to Bontade, decided to cooperate with the Italian state in October 1989, after his brother was killed by the Corleonesi (and subsequently saw his mother, his sister and his aunt killed as well). According to Marino Mannoia the Sicilian-born banker Michele Sindona laundered the proceeds of heroin trafficking for the Bontade-Spatola-Inzerillo-Gambino network.