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The Sicilian Mafia began to provide heroin. In the old days, say federal authorities, opium was grown in Turkey, shipped to Marseilles, France, where it was processed by Corsicans, and then imported into the U.S. by American Mafia families headed by the Genovese family and others. The cracking of the so-called French connection in the early 1970s and the virtual elimination, under U.S. pressure, of opium growing in Turkey all but closed that international trade route.
The consequence was that by the mid-1970s there was a vacuum that the Sicilian Mafia was all too eager to fill. As law-enforcement authorities have suspected-and Buscetta has now confirmed—Palermo has replaced Marseilles as the center of Europe's heroin business. Authorities estimate that some two tons of pure heroin (worth billions of dollars at street prices) are produced in Palermo each year from opium smuggled into Italy from the Golden Crescent of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Heroin can often be bought in New York City's Times Square 48 hours after it leaves Sicily.
The Sicilian connection, say authorities, made heroin smuggling easier because its participants knew each other.
"When the Mafia bought from the French connection, they paid up front because they didn't trust each other," says Giuliani. "But these people don't do business that way. They do it with a handshake, because they have been doing business with each other for such a long time."
In a typical deal, explains Giuliani, Alfano and his people would agree on a quantity of heroin to be delivered and set a price with Giuseppi Ganci, Catalano's chief lieutenant. The money would be wired from brokerage accounts at major firms to secret accounts in Switzerland, where it might remain for three or four months before a member of the Badalamenti family collected it. Meanwhile, as a sign of trust between the two groups, the heroin would be delivered. The actual smuggling is done in innumerable ways. One example: a year ago, FBI agents examined a load of ceramic tiles being shipped from a company located near Milan to an address in Buffalo. When they looked inside the hollowed-out beams of the wooden pallets that held the tiles, they found 40 Ibs. of heroin. Replacing the heroin with a look-alike substance, the FBI allowed the shipment to proceed and followed it to its destination with arrest warrants for eight people. When they raided the address to which the heroin was sent, they found an additional 20 Ibs., plus handguns, jewelry and $150,000 in cash.