Through a fruit and vegetable company | Police suspect murdered mafioso of importing cocaine

Police suspect individuals, including the late mafioso Francesco Del Balso, of having used the latter’s fruit and vegetable company to import large quantities of cocaine into Montreal.

This is one of the aspects of a major investigation by the Sûreté du Québec which is still active, revealed in legal documents filed in court on Monday and including The Press got a copy.

These documents were filed as part of debates surrounding a request from the Prosecution which requested – and obtained – that several objects seized from the suspects be kept until June 2025, to allow the continuation of the investigation. But the Defense persists and once again tries to reduce the duration of the confiscation of property.

It is important to clarify that the allegations contained in the documents have not yet been tested in court.

This investigation, called Ravager, targeted in particular Francesco Del balso, killed by bullets in 2023, but still targets at least 16 individuals, including the influential Hells Angels from the Montreal section, Martin Robert and Stéphane Plouffe.

The fruits of crime

“Source information places them – Del Balso and another whose name was redacted – in restaurant extortion with the sale of fruits and vegetables via Francesco Del Balso’s company, as well as in the importation of cocaine to large scale. The investigation shows that this company is Ten Stars plus,” we can read in the document.

The name of Del Balso does not appear in the company Ten Stars anymore in the Company Register. The first non-majority shareholder is Despina Zouboulakis and she is one of the people targeted by the confiscation of assets.

“The revenue generated by drug trafficking is enormous and it is reasonable to believe that – name redacted – must launder these sums of money through individuals who are well versed in this aspect,” adds the police officer who wrote the document filed in court.

Vegetable “checker”

Del Balso’s involvement in the fruit and vegetable trade is not new.

During the Colisée investigation, between 2002 and 2006, Del Balso said he worked for a chain of markets. Joined by The Press in 2008, the owner of the branches where Del Balso was supposed to work said that the latter had a job as a fruit and vegetable inspector and that, unhappy with his work, he had fired him.

However, investigators from the Joint Investigation Unit against Organized Crime (UMÉCO) of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Quebec had intercepted conversations suggesting that Del Balso received a false salary to prove income and participate in both a dirty money laundering scheme.

At the end of the 2010s, after being released two-thirds of the way through his sentence following the Colisée investigation, Del Balso had taken a job in a Montreal fruit and vegetable company, a condition he had to respect.

Family revenge

Del Balso, 53, was murdered as he left a fitness center located on the Trans-Canada Highway in Dorval, in the West Island of Montreal on June 5, 2023.

According to police, Del Balso was involved in the preparation of the attack during which the youngest son of former Montreal mafia boss Vito Rizzuto, Leonardo Rizzuto, was shot and injured on Highway 440 in March previous.

Before the attack against Leonardo Rizzuto, Del Balso was the victim of two murder attempts, one of which occurred near his home, in Laval, on November 7, 2022.

The next day, the police received information from a source that a relative of Stefano Sollecito and the Rizzuto family was involved in the attack against Del Balso.

“He is part of the Rizzuto/Sollecito clan, which is headed by Leonardo Rizzuto [alias Leo] and Stefano Sollecito [alias Sauce]. There is tension between the Rizzuto/Sollecito clan and the Hells Angels Martin Robert [alias Marty] and its allies. Francesco Del Balso is close to Hells Angels Martin Robert and Stéphane Plouffe [Fesse]. It is for this reason, among others, that the Rizzuto/Sollecito clan tried to have Francesco Del Balso killed,” the document reads.

It also reports conversations involving Del Balso intercepted by the police, and surveillance during which the mafioso was seen accompanied by members of the Marauders, the school club of the Hells Angels in the Montreal section, and another during from which he went, on November 10, 2022, to the gym in front of which he was killed six months later.

(still) complex investigation

The 11 investigators from the National Organized Crime Repression Squad (ENRCO) assigned to the Ravager investigation had, last June, obtained 242 judicial authorizations, carried out 61 searches and seized 185 computer elements.

After an investigator, Jonathan-Pierre Nolin, testified ex parte Monday before Judge Antoine Piché of the Court of Quebec, the prosecutor of the Prosecution, M^e Audrey Simard, requested that the seized items be kept until June 2025, due to the complexity of analyzing electronic devices, but also because a protocol (of the Lavallée type) is currently the subject of discussions in court to extract potentially privileged information contained in devices seized from one of the suspects.

“It may not be going fast enough to the satisfaction of my Defense colleagues, but we have shown you that the investigation is progressing,” argued Mr.^e Simard.

Judge Piché will make his decision later.

To contact Daniel Renaud, call 514 285-7000, ext. 4918, write to [email protected] or write to the postal address of The Press.