Arrested in Malta: A drug trafficker who worked for a Sicilian mafia clan

At a traffic intersection in Catania, where Corso Indipendenza meets Via A. La Marmora, an American flag hangs above one of the traffic lights. A couple of corners away there’s a green piazza between a small orthodox church and a municipal administration office. Here, an AC Milan flag marks the area.

These two flags are how the Cursoti Milanesi and Cappello-Bonaccorsi clans marked their territories in a small corner of Catania, according to an Italian court document seen by MaltaToday, shared by the Investigative Reporting Project Italy (IRPI). These squares became drug-dealing hubs for the two clans in 2017.

On a March evening in 2017, in the corner of Corso Indipendenza, a young man in his later 20s named Gianluca Caruso can be seen driving towards Via A. La Marmora and back several times. It’s almost 1am when Caruso is then seen counting cash and delivering the money to a man in a white Smart car. Around 15 minutes later, Caruso delivers another wad of cash to the same man. He makes his last delivery at 4:17am, and his shift in the square stops there.

According to the court document, police suspected that Caruso had been carrying out drug deliveries and collecting the proceeds that night. The man in the white Smart car was Lorenzo Cristian Monaco, who they suspected was running the operation.

After catching on to this behaviour, Italian police carried out Operation Tricolore, which led to 40 arrests and charges relating to criminal association and drug trafficking, aggravated by mafia-like methods.

Caruso’s prison sentence was handed down last April by Catania’s Court of Appeal. Now 32 years old, Caruso was sentenced to seven years and two months in prison. However, Caruso was not present in the Sicilian court when this decision was handed down.

It turns out that Caruso had already moved to Malta by this point. He travelled to Malta while out on bail awaiting the verdict on his cocaine trafficking charges. Now, he is expecting a child with his partner.

But last Thursday, Maltese authorities arrested Caruso at his workplace on the strength of a European Arrest Warrant issued by the Sicilian authorities. The warrant was based on a final judgment from the Court of Appeal handed down on 4 April this year.

In court, police inspector Roderick Spiteri said he had arrested Caruso after police received an alert through the pan-European Schengen Information System, which informs national police forces across the EU when a wanted person is believed to be in their country.

Caruso’s lawyers, however, challenged the validity of his arrest. Lawyer Charles Mercieca argued that police did not have a copy of the sentence upon which the arrest warrant had been based, which rendered the arrest illegal.

On the day, the magistrate abstained from deciding the validity of the arrest – another magistrate will oversee the case in the coming days. In the meantime, Caruso will remain in custody until a decision is taken on his extradition.

Additional reporting Matthew Agius