Moreno Gallo of Montreal loses deportation case
December 09, 2010 Dapper_Don
A convicted killer caught delivering large wads of cash to leading Mafia bosses has lost a court challenge against a deportation order to send him back to Italy.
Despite the legal setback, Moreno Gallo, 65, of Montreal is not facing immediate removal. The government faces additional hurdles before it can buy a plane ticket for the man who has lived in Canada since 1954.
Gallo moved to Canada from Italy when he was 9, but never became a citizen.
He married and produced three children here and was convicted in 1974 of murder after shooting a Montreal man three times in the head as the victim sat at the wheel of his car. Gallo claimed he shot in self-defence when confronting a man over selling drugs at his sister's school.
Police said it was a settling of accounts in a Mafia war.
When sent to prison, Gallo was mistakenly labelled as a Canadian citizen, meaning deportation was not an issue. In 1983, he was released on parole and has lived in relative peace as a successful businessman.
But in 2005, Gallo was seen delivering stacks of money to the leaders of the Rizzuto crime family in the backroom of the Montreal mob's headquarters. During one visit, police video secretly captured him handing money to Nicolo Rizzuto, patriarch of the clan murdered last month, who tucked the money into his sock; on another, Rizzuto and other senior Mafia leaders divided it among themselves.
No charges were laid. but Gallo's parole was revoked. It was discovered he was not a Canadian, but rather a permanent resident. He has since been re-released on parole.
The government has been trying to deport him as a non-citizen involved in serious crime and Gallo has been successfully fighting it in court, but in a decision released this week, his latest appeal to the Federal Court of Canada has been rejected.
Justice David G. Near ruled that the government has not violated Gallo's right to procedural fairness. None of Gallo's claimed factual errors in the analysis of his case were fatal to its conclusion, Near ruled.
"Mr. Gallo is now eligible for a pre-removal risk assessment," said Jacqueline Roby, a spokeswoman for CBSA. That is a process to ensure Canada does not send someone to a country where they would be in danger of persecution.
"There is no removal date for now," she said.
Although Gallo is a Montreal resident, he has pursued his court appeals in Toronto.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Moreno+Gallo+Montreal+loses+deportation+case/3942411/story.html#ixzz17fIjqFLI
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