Even a stay of proceedings for the Hells Angels Salvatore Cazzetta

Archival Photo Chantal Poirier

Eric Thibault

Wednesday, 6 December 2017 10:43

UPDATE
Wednesday, 6 December 2017 10:46

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The former leader of the Hells Angels, Salvatore Cazzetta, has received a Christmas gift in advance, on Wednesday morning at the palais de justice of Montreal, enjoying his third stop of the procedures in six years.

The biker 61-year-old was awaiting trial, expected in the winter of 2018, faces a charge of concealment of a sum of money from the crime since his arrest in the operation Mastiff, in November 2015.

This charge was eventually dropped by the Crown, Wednesday, and judge Daniel Bédard has immediately released the Hells nicknamed “The Beard” in the criminal underworld.

21 months in jail

The prosecution has not justified its decision. However, on the 11th of last August, prosecutors had agreed with the defence, before the tribunal, that if Cazzetta was to be found guilty of handling stolen goods after a trial, he would have already served his sentence.

The native of the district of Saint-Henri had been released on bail after 21 months in detention on remand. He had undergone surgery in the heart a few weeks before being taken to the prison in Rivière-des-Prairies.

Accusations of conspiracy and gangsterism that had been brought against him following the raid the police had also been dismissed earlier this year at the end of the requests of the defence.

Already-seen

Salvatore Cazzetta is one of the few bikers in quebec to be able to boast to be left unscathed by three police operations major in which he was charged.

In may 2011, in operation SharQc he was part of the 31 Hells accused of drug trafficking and gangsterism that have been released by justice James Brunton because they could not be tried within a reasonable time.

Then, in the fall of 2016, after his lawyers had pleaded the judgment in Jordan, he got the same result for the charges of fraud filed against him in 2009 in the project Machine, relatively to a network of tobacco smuggling.

Cazzetta had founded the Rock Machine in 1989 before being extradited to the United States in 1994 and convicted for importation of cocaine.

On his return to the country in 2004, his gang was scuttled after having delivered a deadly war with the Hells Angels for control of the drug market. Cazzetta has joined the ranks of the Hells in the following year as several ex-Rock Machine. It then became their leader between 2011 and 2015, while the band was still decimated by the operation SharQc.

– With the collaboration of Michael Nguyen