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Showing posts from September, 2017

'Mafia links' halted Trump plan to build Sydney casino

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Donald Trump's plan to build and operate Sydney's first casino were killed off due to police concerns over his consortium's 'mafia connections', according to documents made public after 30 years The now US president was in the running for the contract in 1987 with joint venture partner the Kern Corporation, but Australian police were so concerned they recommended it be excluded. At the time, Trump operated two casinos in Atlantic City -- Trump Plaza and Trump's Castle, and was close to owning a third. "Atlantic City would be a dubious model for Sydney and in our judgement, the Trump Mafia connections should exclude the Kern/Trump consortium," the New South Wales Police Board said in report dated April 3, 1987. A summary of the board's position was contained in cabinet minutes from the then-NSW Labor government on May 4 that year, released Thursday after being declassified and confirming revelations in The Australian newspaper last month

A Mafia Boss Has Been Arrested in Uruguay After 23 Years on the Run

Police in Uruguay have arrested one of Italy's most wanted fugitives — the so-called "cocaine king of Milan"— who had been hiding out in the South American country for more than a decade. Rocco Morabito, a boss of the Calabria-based Ndrangheta crime group, which controls much of the world's cocaine trade, had been on the run for 23 years in total, the Guardian reports. He is subject to a 30-year prison sentence in Italy after attempting to smuggle almost a tonne of cocaine into the country from Brazil in the 1990s. Morabito's arrest at a luxury Montevideo hotel on Monday follows a six-month investigation by Uruguayan police, who were reportedly alerted to his presence when he registered his daughter at a local school using his real name instead of an alias. Italian and Uruguayan authorities cited by the Guardian said that Morabito, 50, had long been living in Uruguay's southern coastal resort of Punta del Esta under an assumed identity. He is thought