Havana Conference
Supposedly arranged by Charles "Lucky" Luciano, the conference was held to discuss important mob policies, rules, and business interests.
Military intelligence was worried about possible Nazi sabotage of docks and other shipping facilities in New York and other East Coast ports.
The government told Luciano that if his family was able to protect East Coast ports from sabotage, he would be pardoned at the end of the war and deported to Italy as a free man.
After the war ended, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey agreed to Luciano's pardon on the condition that he never be allowed back into the U.S.
After being forced out of Rome by Italian police, he finally settled in Naples and immediately started planning a return to the United States.
In early fall 1946, Luciano received a sealed envelope from a recently deported U.S. mafioso, which contained three words, "December-Hotel Nacional."
In late September, Luciano obtained two Italian passports issued in his real name, Salvatore Lucania, with visas for Mexico, Cuba, and several South American nations.
Following Luciano's orders, Lansky had organized a conference in Havana the week of December 22 of crime bosses from all over the United States.
The official cover story for the Havana Conference was that the mobsters were attending a gala party with Frank Sinatra as the entertainment.
Boss Vito Genovese had returned to New York from exile in Italy and was not content with assuming a minor role in the organization.
A board of directors, commonly called the "Commission", had been formed to oversee criminal activities, control rules, and set policies.
In the 1930s, the organization started transporting narcotics from the East Asia Golden Triangle and South America to Cuba and into Florida.
The American mob had a longtime association with the government of Cuba concerning gambling interests such as casinos along with their legitimate business investments on the Caribbean island.
This put them in a position to use their political and underworld connections to make Cuba one of their narcotics importation layovers or smuggling points where the drugs could be stored.
Also, Don Pasquale Ania, a powerful boss in Palermo who had connections to legitimate pharmaceutical companies because large-scale heroin manufacturing in Italy was legal at the time.
After arriving in Cuba from North Africa, the mob would ship the narcotics to US ports that it controlled, primarily New York City, New Orleans, and Tampa.
A top Luciano lieutenant in the "Caneba Network" of mainland Italy was Antonio Farina, who would ship the narcotics to their U.S. partners in New York's Mangano crime family including Albert Anastasia, Frank "Don Cheech" Scalise, Jack Scarpulla, Peter Beddia and Matthew "Matty" Cuomo.
This was a satellite group affiliated with the Detroit Partnership or Zerilli crime family led by boss Joseph "Joe Z."
Even with all the growing animosity Lucky Luciano couldn't leave out his old associate, Vito "Don Vito" Genovese who had his group of distributors including Anthony "Tony Bender" Strollo, Vincent "Vinnie Bruno" Mauro, Frank "The Bug" Caruso, Salvatore "Sam" Maneri, Vincent "Chin" Gigante and even Joseph "Joe Cago" Valachi who were all associated with the "Papalia-Agueci Network" of the Magaddino crime family of Buffalo and led by members Johnny "Pops" Papalia and Alberto Agueci of Hamilton and Toronto, Ontario.
Without a doubt one of the architects of the American heroin network and a partner of Luciano is well known and powerful New York mafia boss, Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno, the patriarch of the Bonanno crime family, who along with the assistance of his cousin, Buffalo crime family boss Stefano "The Undertaker" Magaddino led the American mafia's expansion into Canada.
When Cuban president Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar was eventually overthrown by Fidel Castro in 1959, the mob had to look elsewhere for a landing and storage facility for their narcotics shipments.
In the mid-1930s, the New York and Chicago crime families had been sent west to establish and oversee a race wire service, gambling activities in Los Angeles and Nevada, and supervise narcotics shipments from Mexico.
Siegel persuaded his longtime friend and business associate Meyer Lansky to help him sell New York and Chicago crime bosses on investing in this project.
[citation needed] The Flamingo project was also impacted by the rising cost of materials and labor from the post World War II building boom.
Lansky and the bosses had discovered that Hill was taking frequent trips to Zürich, Switzerland and depositing money in a bank account.
Dragna, who despised Siegel, then gave the contract to Mob hitman, John "Frankie" Carbo, a Lucchese crime family soldier.
On June 20, 1947, Siegel was home alone at Hill's mansion in Los Angeles reading a newspaper by a living room window.
Lucky Luciano died on January 26, 1962, of a heart attack at the Naples, Italy airport while picking up movie producer Martin Gosch.
Martin Gosch had helped Luciano write an autobiographical screenplay, but the Mafia Commission wouldn't allow the film to be made.
Luciano's longtime associate and eventual nemesis, Vito Genovese, died a natural death in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in 1969.
