Authorities: 21 arrests shut down major Miami-based crime ring (Cu. Mafia)

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Thu, Mar. 18, 2004





Authorities: 21 arrests shut down major Miami-based crime ring

ADRIAN SAINZ

Associated Press


MIAMI - An aging reputed crime boss and 20 other top members of an organized ring were arrested Thursday, accused of decades worth of illegal gambling, drug dealing, drug running and murder in the eastern United States.

The arrests were based on a federal racketeering indictment naming Jose Miguel Battle, 74, as the leader of "the Corporation" or the "Cuban Mafia," a syndicate that built a foundation on bookmaking and numbers running and blossomed into other criminal enterprises.

Dozens of agents raided several banks Thursday, freezing several million dollars in property, said Miami-Dade County Police Director Carlos Alvarez. The indictment named 25 defendants and seeks $1.5 billion in restitution.

Alvarez said the arrests mean the dismantling of a major organized crime family that has been operating since 1964.
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/8220805.htm

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On edit:

(snip) Reputed mobster one of Miami's wealthiest

And there are innumerable underworld characters who are little known. Jose Miguel Battle, for instance is the reputed head of the Cuban-American syndicate known as "the Corporation." Authorities say he controls numbers rackets from New York to Florida.

He owns a 30 acre ranch and was listed 10 years ago as one of Dade County's wealthiest men with a net worth of $175 million.

To stay ahead of the Mafia, law enforcement is moving from La Cosa Nostra to new organized crime groups taking hold all over the country.
(snip)

http://www.cnn.com/US/9701/03/mobster.wrap/

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On edit, again. Dropping off an interesting ort I found in google, looking for more on the Cuban Mafia. This looks like something some of us have been thinking about, specifically, "What the hell is "Reporters Without Borders?"

(snip) Reporters Without Borders (aka "Reporters Without Frontiers")
Further to your news item of Nov 22 mentioning the publication of the 2nd annual rankings of press freedom by "Reporters Without Borders", Al-Jazeerah readers may be interested to learn some background facts about this organisation. It has become so embarrassingly well-established that RWB is an espionage front of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency that this NGO lost its UN funding for 2003-2004 after it was found to be engaging in activities incompatible with its proper status.

Attached is a collection of articles earlier this year in the Cuban press exposing the particularly filthy role of RWB's chief exec, Robert Ménard, an enthusiastic stooge of the anti-Castro Cuban mafia in Miami.
(snip/...)
~~~~ link ~~~~

Sorry, can't look more right now, have to be gone, will look around for more on this late tonight.

[rfranklin]

1. Didn't the envelope get tp Jeb on time?

What a bummer. All those Bush votes down the drain.

[leesa]

2. Wonder if Jeb and DeLay were members in good standing

Certainly they were Poppy's buddies.

[DUreader]

3. Hey Judy, here is an older piece on "Distorters Without Borders"

http://www.narconews.com/Issue25/article10.html


The "Distorters Without Borders"
The Two Roberts, Cox and Menard: Threats to Press Freedom

Venezuela: "The Show Must Go On!"
IAPA: Complicit in 1973 Coup in Chile

By Thierry Deronne
Reporting from Venezuela

October 4, 2002

A SEPTEMBER DAWN, 2002, IN THE VENEZUELAN COUNTRYSIDE: From a white vehicle that passes by a parking lot, some “unknown persons” throw four molotov cocktails. On the other side, someone puts out the fires right away: no victim, no damage. It’s just that the parking lot belongs to a regional affiliate of the commercial TV chain, “Globovision.” 1 And that the “attack” happens a few hours from the official visit to the region by President Hugo Chávez: and at the precise moment when a tripartite delegation of the Organization of American States (OAS), the Carter Foundation and the PNUD are investigating the issue of freedom of speech in Venezuela.

Next, Globovision denounces, with grand visual spectacle, a “Bolshevist attack with grenades.” It broadcasts archival footage of a car-bomb attempt against a Venezuelan president, decades ago. The editor of the daily El Nacional, Miguel Enrique Otero2, without waiting for any investigation, confirms: “The government has created para-governmental squads to act against the media and journalists,” and, “Chavez’s speech is responsible for the aggressions.”3. El Nacional’s front page displays an immediate letter from Robert Ménard, director of Reporters Without Borders, who demands that the Venezuelan government put an end to violence against the press.

A week later, when the OAS has left the country, the daily El Nacional resumes its campaign of aggressions against the Community Media4. This time, the target is the Community Radio station of Antimano. The reporter mentions a poster on the wall of the studio as proof of its Chavista nature, and criticizes the fact that the radio station says that there was a coup d’etat in Venezuela. El Nacional denounces the “illegality” of this radio station and 100 Community Media outlets in the entire country. Some weeks ago, the radio station in El Nacional’s target was victim of harassment by security forces in the hands of the Anti-Chavez opposition. Its members were liberated after the Community Media movement took to the streets.

In reality, El Nacional, a key newspaper in the organization of the coup, rejects, with any type of argument it can conjure, the possibility of pluralism of information in Venezuela. Its reporter quotes Miguel Ángel Martínez, president of the private-sector Chamber of Radio Industries, who denounces the “illegality” of the Community Radio stations. Martínez, in the name of the Chamber, publicly signed the decree of the short-lived coup d’etat last April. Later, in a public assembly on the tourist island of Margarita, he asked his affiliates to interfere with the frequencies of Community Media broadcasters when the next coup come

[Judi Lynn]

4. DU Reader, what a find!

Don't know if you were reading a couple of weeks ago, but "El Nacional" was held up to us as a legitimate journalism source. What a crude joke!

So glad to see this article. It's tremendous,and provides more insight into these pathetic bustards who have been brandished about by our visiting right-wing coup supporter as God's Gift to Journalism and Human Rights.

From the article:

In September, our Community TV station, Teletambores, has produced various reports about the struggle for land in the state of Yaracuy. The farmers complain of harassment, torture, numerous assassinations and “disappearances” committed by local police in service of the opposition that is opposed to a moderate agrarian reform proposed by President Chávez. Some of these reports were broadcast by VTV, the only public television station, and a while later by Zalea TV in Paris, that defends, in France, the Freedom of Audiovisual Speech. The farmers bitterly complain that none of the large commercial media has reported the repression. Clearly, the media falls silent when there are massive assassinations of farmers… because its owners belong to the same economic groups as the plantation owners. Even worse: those “media” outlets widely justify the bloody repression by calling the farmers without land who are planting on the first acres resulting from the agrarian reform “terrorists,” and, “invaders trained by the Cubans,” etcetera.

The disproportion between the public show by these “media” outlets in the cases of very opportune “attacks” and their hiding of massive Human Rights violations is impressive.

If the Community Media has one vital task, it is to reinvent the idea of information, because the commercial, monopolistic TV stations – sub-copies of United States television – have destroyed that very concept. It’s as if no International Convention of Journalism ever existed. It’s “anchors” interrupt their brief news items during the programs to sell all kinds of products – shampoo, fashion clothes, miracle creams – without any type of transition. The “news reporters” are reduced to parrot a unilateral and obsessive form of political propaganda. They are absolutely racist (you won’t see a black anchorperson, for example) when the population is, in a large part, of African origin. What’s more, they’ve always looked with scorn upon the popular neighborhoods where 80-percent of the population lives, describing them as the ultimate bastions of hell, of vice, of delinquency, and calling for an iron fist against their inhabitants.

It’s an old trick of History that private-sector communication businesses pass themselves off as “information media.” This permits them to invoke “freedom of speech” when they see their economic interests threatened. From there, their fevered search for international and “super-objective” allies. The “super-objectivity” displayed by the letters authored by “Reporters Without Borders” gives the campaign by the commercial media great efficiency in circulating around the world, for example, among other Human Rights organizations who believe “Reporters Without Borders” without question.
(snip/...)http://www.narconews.com/Issue25/article10.html

[Blue_Tires]

5. they also need to be investigated for connections

in the grisly murder of one Tony Montana back in 1980...I seem to remember him as a patriotic emigre who only wanted to sink his teeth in the American Dream...

(lol...sorry, but you knew that was coming)

[Judi Lynn]

6. You note they make an effort to vow that rough stuff is completely over

in this article.

Same thing happens in stories about Willie Falcon and Sal Magluta, who sold $2,000,000,000 in cocaine, and arranged murders of witnesses, and bribed jurors. They usually insist that the drug days in Miami were allllll the waaaaaay back in the 1980's, trying to paint Miami as corruption-free in the present. NICE TRY!

Magluta Sentenced For Jury Bribery, Money Laundering
Magluta Blasts Judge's Decision
NBC 6 News Team

POSTED: 5:40 p.m. EST January 22, 2003
UPDATED: 2:08 p.m. EST January 23, 2003

MIAMI -- Sal Magluta, who was convicted last year of jury bribery and money laundering in one of Miami's most notorious drug trafficking cases was sentenced to 205 years in prison and a $62 million fine, essentially giving the prosecution what it wanted.

Prosecutors had sought a life term and a $70 million fine for the reputed drug kingpin, who avoided a mandatory life sentence last August when he was acquitted of the most serious charges against him, including allegations that he paid for the murders of three prosecution witnesses in 1996 drug trial that ended in acquittal.
(snip)

Magluta and Falcon, Cuban immigrants and Miami high school dropouts who were nicknamed "The Boys" (or "los muchachos",) were blamed for smuggling 78 tons of cocaine as well as the downfall of a U.S. attorney, who reportedly drowned his sorrows over the 1996 courtroom loss at an adult nightclub.
(snip/...)

http://www.nbc6.net/newsfromtheamericas/1929547/detail.html

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Interesting info. on FBI case against one of their associates:

Miami Field Office
Federal Bureau of Investigation

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
16320 N.W. 2nd Avenue
North Miami Beach, FL 33169
[phone]

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For Immediate Release
December 10, 2002

FORMER REALTOR JOSE FERNANDEZ CONVICTED OF CONSPIRACY TO LAUNDER DRUG PROCEEDS, CONSPIRACY TO OBSTRUCT JUSTICE AND PERJURY

Marcos Daniel Jiménez, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida; Hector M. Pesquera, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami Field Office; and Thomas W. Raffanello, Special Agent in Charge, Drug Enforcement Administration, announced the conviction of Jose Fernandez by a jury in Miami following a four-week trial before United States District Judge Ursula Ungaro-Benages. The jury convicted Fernandez on all counts charged, which were one count of conspiracy to launder drug proceeds, one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, and six counts of perjury. Fernandez has been in custody since his arrest in April 2002. Based upon the jury's guilty verdicts, Fernandez faces a maximum term of imprisonment of 55 years.

This case arises out of a twenty-year long obstruction of justice and money laundering conspiracy involving associates of Salvador "Sal" Magluta and Augusto Guillermo "Willy" Falcon. In 1987, Magluta and Falcon absconded on pending charges in California and remained fugitives until their arrests in October 1991 on federal cocaine trafficking charges in Miami. Fernandez, who has worked in Dade County as a realtor since the late 1980s, assisted Magluta in avoiding arrest by renting him several apartments in Miami Beach under false identities. Prior to Magluta's arrest, Fernandez also rented Magluta several luxury homes in Golden Beach under one of the false identities. One of the homes rented for $9,500 per month. The other rented for $15,000 per month.

In the late 1980s, Fernandez also assisted Magluta in hiding real estate holdings in the names of nominees. After the United States Marshals Service commenced forfeiture proceedings in 1988 on a Magluta family ranch in West Dade, Fernandez helped several Magluta associates purchase the property and retain it as nominees for Magluta. In 1989, Fernandez brokered the transaction that allowed long-time Magluta associate Marilyn Bonachea to purchase the adjoining lot as a nominee for Magluta.

Following the return of the 1991 federal cocaine trafficking indictment, the Court entered a protective order that froze Magluta-Falcon organization drug proceeds, including $2 billion in United States currency. The organization sought to evade the restraining order through a sophisticated money laundering scheme that involved moving drug proceeds through Latin America, Europe and Israel. The organization used the laundered funds to hire a massive team of lawyers and investigators for themselves and co-defendants who had agreed not to cooperate against them in return for payment of their legal expenses. Fernandez assisted this scheme by providing money laundering instructions from Magluta to one organization member who was responsible for laundering drug proceeds through Europe and Israel. Fernandez also provided checks in fictitious names from Latin American financial institutions to a second organization member who was responsible for sending them to members of the defense team.
(snip/...)

http://miami.fbi.gov/pressrel/2002/mm121002.htm

[Judi Lynn]

7. Accused Godfather of Cuban gambling organization arrested on cruise ship

Posted on Fri, Mar. 19, 2004


Accused Godfather of Cuban gambling organization arrested on cruise ship

BY LARRY LEBOWITZ

[e-mail]


Alleged Cuban crime boss Jose Miguel Battle Jr. was arrested early this morning by U.S. Coast Guard officers while vacationing on a cruise ship in the Caribbean.

Federal prosecutors say Battle, 51, of Key Biscayne, has succeeded his 74-year-old father as ''El Padrino'' or Godfather of the Cuban Mafia organization known as ``The Corporation.''

He was picked up, without incident, aboard the Celebrity Summit at 4:30 a.m. Authorities were concerned that Battle could have jumped ship in the next port of call in Costa Rica to avoid extradition to the U.S.

Both Battles were among 25 people indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on racketeering and illegal gambling charges. The case covers the Battles' control of the bolita numbers racket, drug trafficking and money laundering.
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/breaking_news/8229068.htm

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Information on his vicious dad, who has also been bagged:

Other significant Hispanic groups known to be involved in organized crime activity in New Jersey are Cuban. The largest of these is the group led by Jose Battle, a Cuban- born refugee and former Havana vice officer who once served in the army of Fulgencio Battista.

Battle's organization, known on the street as the "Corporation," is involved in narcotic and gambling activities in Hispanic neighborhoods in northern New Jersey, New York, Miami, Tampa, Houston and other urban areas. It generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenues, is believed to have about 2,500 members and is considered extremely violent. More than 30 murders have been attributed to the group, and it is believed to have set more than 20 fires in 14 rival betting parlors in less than two years between 1983 and 1985. Eight persons died in those fires.

Although Battle now resides in Florida, he has lived periodically in New Jersey and New York and maintains strong control of his illegal opera- tions in these areas. Authorities in Hudson County are aware of a few operatives who are overseeing Battle's illicit activities on a day-to-day basis.

Those in the Battle Corporation who are currently active in illicit activities are involved in the traditional type of street crimes-narcotics trafficking, stolen property, gambling (mostly lottery), loansharking and money laundering. As noted previously, Cubans are now working with Colombians in the distribution of drugs to street level dealers. These activities are primarily confined to Hudson County, the area of the state most heavily populated by Cubans and Colombians.
(snip/)

http://www.mafianj.com/hispanic/cubans.shtml