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When his brother was killed last year in an ambush, Vincenzo Muià became the boss of his Mafia clan in southern Italy. One of his first acts of leadership was to gather his loyal soldiers to plan their defence. His next was avenging his brother.

For that, he came to Canada.

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“If I don’t know who killed him, how can I sleep peacefully? How can I sleep?” he lamented, according to a translation of a police wiretap that captured his conversations.

Unwittingly, Muià’s arrival in Toronto this spring to consult Mafia leaders living in Ontario came at a terrible time for the grieving boss. At that moment, York Regional Police had an ambitious anti-mob probe underway targeting the very people he had come to consult.

Photo by File

His presence in Canada, police in Italy say, helped investigators not only understand more about the murder of Muià’s brother but also a raft of other crimes, producing 12 arrests in Italy including one of a Canadian man born in Toronto.