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Last
week's indictment of three men with Mob
ties in the gangland-style murder of
gambling ship magnate Gus Boulis during
Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's
take-over of the gambling cruise ship
line revealed deep Mob connections at
the highest levels of the Republican
Party.
Now
The
MadCowMorningNews has
learned exclusively of more Mob ties to
the case. One of the principals in the
scandal, Adam Kidan, an Abramoff partner
and a former Republican “fund-raiser,”
was the co-owner and general counsel of
a Caribbean island hotel-casino with
Rosario Spadaro, called "a
member of the Sicilian
Mafia" in an Associated Press story reporting
his recent arrest in Italy in a major
investigation into international arms
trafficking.
“St. Maarten hotel owner arrested,
linked to Mafia”
read the headline.
“Italian police have arrested St.
Maarten's most prominent hotel owner,
Rosario Spadaro, accusing him
of laundering money for the Sicilian
Mafia, Italian police said Thursday,”
read the AP report in the May 20, 2005
Orlando Sentinel.
“Spadora
was arrested May 9 in Rome's Fiumicino
airport, as soon as he landed in Italy
on a flight from Caracas, Venezuela, the
Messina anti-Mafia police said.”
Just how
stupid do you think I am?
Kidan,
Abramoff’s second-in-command at the
SunCruz casino line,
is reportedly soon to be indicted for
the murder of Gus Boulis’ murder, on the
relatively safe grounds that he wrote
checks totaling a quarter million
dollars for no easily discernible
reason to the Gambino hit man
recently charged with the crime.
His
defense will probably be that he paid
the goombah with a check.
He will asks the jury, “Do I look stupid
to you?”
We
think they will almost certainly answer
“yes.”
And
based on emails from Kidan to Abramoff
in the days before the murder, suspicion
is growing that Abramoff may also be
involved in what police called the
“highly professional hit.”
In
e-mails to Abramoff, Kidan made a
cryptic reference to an ally who had
sent “protection” to Kidan in Florida.
Abramoff would have known that such an
individual brought his own bat with him
when he traveled.
"My
friend in NY is acting out of concern
for my safety," Kidan wrote to Abramoff.
"I was the victim of family violence
before. Lets use that in our favor (my
mother wouldn't mind) to show how we
can't tolerate violence and the like of
criminals.”
Abramoff's reply, even though he knows
they are in default on their agreement
to pay Boulis, is: "I agree with this
completely. Gus needs to move on out of
the company."
Kidan’s reference to his mother refers
to her well-publicized murder by Mafia
goons from the Bonanno family, including
Madonna’s former boyfriend Chris
Paciello.
That’s
been reported. What hasn't is that
Kidan’s step-father, Sami Shemtov, an
Israeli national, has extensive
“interests” in pornography business in
South Florida. The Bonanno crew thought
he was ripe for a take-down.
A Potemkin
village, A wizard behind the curtain
News
of Kidan’s Sicilian Mafia partner in St
Maarten, learned while investigating
details of Jack Abramoff’s involvement
with Sun Cruz Casinos, adds to the
unsavory portrait emerging of Republican
operatives involved in the various
Abramoff scandals.
What
is known so far may be nothing more than
a cover story, we suspected, a false
front, or ‘Potemkin village,’
defined as “an impressive facade or
display that hides an undesirable fact
or
state.”
For
example, at the time of the
“purchase” of SunCruz Casinos
(Boulis never got his money) news
accounts of the news owners failed to
mention that Kidan was a disbarred
attorney, and that his “Dial-a-Mattress”
franchise had recently gone bankrupt,
all of which might have given rise to
speculation about where he was getting
the reported $147 million to buy the
line.
Kidan
was described as part of a team of
seasoned casino and entertainment
executives, as well as “an owner and
general counsel to the St. Maarten Hotel
Beach Club and Casino," according to The
St. Petersburg Times, and other news
accounts.
Adam
Kidan’s newly-uncovered link to a
Sicilian Mafia figure sheds light on the
activities of secretive Naples, FL
financier Wally Hilliard, owner of 9.11
terror flight school attended by Mohamed
Atta.
“Some
of the same names in the Abramoff
scandal also surface in connection with
Mohamed Atta’s,” we reported, in a June
21, 2005 story headlined “THE SECRET
WORLD OF 9.11.”
Apparently we didn't know the half of
it...
Waiting for
Fidel to slip on the big banana peel
From a
story in the Miami Herald on May 17,
1999 headlined
“MAFIA HAS
EYES ON CUBA:"
Sicilian mobsters are planning to set
up shop in Cuba once President Fidel
Castro is gone from the scene, GQ
magazine reports in its May issue.
Mafia families want to use hotel,
casino and public works projects to
launder money and profiteer, GQ said
in an article headlined Big Trouble in
Havana, quoting U.S. and Italian
law-enforcement officials.
GQ
names St. Martin, in the Dutch
Antilles, as a key organized-crime
staging area for Cuba, and Rosario
Spadaro, an Italian businessman with
two hotels and two casinos there, as a
financier with Mafia ties who is
likely to be a key figure in future
organized-crime ventures in Cuba.
At
the same time the Miami Herald says the
Sicilian Mafia was seeking to re-enter
Cuba, Wally Hilliard was also engaged in
an “opening to Cuba.”
As
we've reported before, photographs of
Hilliard from his trips to Havana shows
him strapping a Rolex with the must-have
diamond beveled-face onto the presumably
grateful wrist of one of Fidel Castro’s
top aides, Guillermo Garcia Frias, known
in Cuba as "the Commandante of the
Revolution."
Aviation executives and former employees
of Hilliard's, like his former Director
of Operations Bill Bersch, had told us
of their puzzlement at Wally's Cuban
adventure.
“I
used to look at Wally and Rudi and
wonder what made them think they could
start an airline,” he told us. “I mean,
I was on the executive team, trying to
start an airline, and from August 2000
to the present we had all of four
business meetings. Even when you could
get a meeting scheduled, somebody would
tell you that it had been canceled...
because Wally is in Havana.”
Have a cigar. We're waiting for Don
Corleone to start
Hilliard had been looking to cut a deal
with Castro, said Rob Tiller, who
provided the photograph, to buy a 10,000
acre cattle ranch on the island for the
Mormon Church in Utah, reportedly in
anticipation of the resumption of normal
diplomatic relations between Cuba and
the United States.
The
explanation never made sense. Now, we
are led to wonder: Were Hilliard's
visits to Havana part of Sicilian Mafia
efforts to regain a foothold in Cuba?
The
man who owned the Florida flight school
which so many suspected terrorists
called home remains seemingly immune to
official questioning.
It was
widely reported that Atta and several
other hijackers made a still-unexplained
visit onboard one of Abramoff’s casino
boats less than a week before the 9.11
attack,” we reported on June 21 2005.
We
have learned they may have been aboard
three.
“Two
or three men linked to the hijackings
may have been customers on the
SunCruz ship that is based at
John's Pass,” the St. Petersburg
Times reported September 27, 2001.
“SunCruz Casinos has turned over
security videotapes and documents to FBI
investigators The cruise line also is
giving the FBI a videotape from a
Port Canaveral ship of a former
customer that a casino manager thinks
resembles one of the terrorists.”
Two
days later the paper reported, “The
Pasco County Sheriff's Office has
notified the FBI that a local man thinks
he might have seen two of the terrorist
hijackers last month on a ‘Paradise of
Port Richey’ gambling
boat, a sheriff's spokesman said.
Stephen Babus, 46, of New Port Richey
reported to deputies that he saw two
Middle Eastern men betting $ 700 to $
800 a hand on roulette aboard the
Paradise ship, which docks in Port
Richey.”
In
their last word on the matter, the paper
reported that the FBI was
‘investigating.” We don't imagine anyone
was holding their breath waiting.
Its an
ill wind that doesn’t blow somebody some
good, and the current scandal starring
the GOP’s top lobbyist may yet prove a
boon to the party’s efforts to display a
common touch.
Abramoff, for example, will someday be
able to talk about current trends in
license plate manufacture, and proudly
display his prison ‘tats’ on Meet the
Press.
We all
need something to look forward to.
THURSDAY: OLLIE NORTH TEACHES JACK THE
MEANING OF "OFF THE BOOKS"
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