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The man named the “the top guy in Toronto” for one of the world’s most powerful crime groups is asking a Canadian court to stop Ottawa’s plan to deport him.

Vincenzo (Jimmy) DeMaria, 63, has lived in Canada since he was an infant but never became a Canadian citizen; after a recent declaration he is a senior member of the Mafia and involved in transnational crime, he was ordered back to Italy.

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The Immigration and Refugee Board issued a deportation order against him late last month after lengthy hearings. The IRB accepted police evidence that DeMaria was a senior boss in Canada of the ’Ndrangheta — the proper name of the Mafia formed in Italy’s region of Calabra — who engaged in money laundering or other proceeds of crime violations.

The focus of a recent National Post investigation into his past and the desperate measures authorities turned to do to prove his position in the underworld, he is now asking the Federal Court of Canada to intervene and review the IRB’s decision.