John Fiero, told police recently that Dinassio threatened him for his trades in one stock brought public by Euro-Atlantic, Hollywood Productions Inc. Fiero refused comment and company officials did not return phone calls. Contacted at Euro-Atlantic's office in lower Manhattan, Dinassio declined to discuss his role at the firm. Asked about the allegations that he was connected to organized crime, he replied: ''What? I think you're crazy, buddy. I'll talk to you later,'' and hung up. Euro-Atlantic officials did not return phone calls.
Although whistle-blowers in Mob-run firms are rare, the increasing violence is beginning to enter the public record. At Monitor, the firm Franzese allegedly claimed to control, an incident last January led to a rarity in this world--a lawsuit. In a suit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, former broker Robert Grant contends that he was ''maliciously and violently struck, battered, beaten, pummelled, pushed, punched, and attacked'' by Monitor employees at the instigation of Palla and another manager. At one point, the suit says, Grant was beaten with a chair. The lawsuit does not say so, but witnesses say that another broker was also viciously assaulted. Neither Grant nor the other broker would comment, and Palla says he was in Philadelphia at the time of the incident, which he describes as a ''fight.'' One witness says Monitor management suspected that the two brokers may have been short-selling Monitor's favorite stocks.
Some of the most violent, crudest elements to come to the Street are part of its fastest-growing contingent--the Russian Mob, based in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn. ''Over the past couple of years, they've put people in the [brokerages], kids with clean records, and they're washing money legitimately,'' says one law-enforcement official who is intimately familiar with Russian organized crime. The offspring of two major Russian mob figures, he notes, have been active on Wall Street.
The Mob's fascination with Wall Street is understandable, for they have had little to fear from law enforcement or regulators. If the authorities, finally, act against Mob members who are active on the Street, it will be the first such prosecution since 1973, when three major Mob figures were imprisoned for securities fraud. At the time, the Mobsters were vanquished because one of their confederates became a government witness. ''It's practically impossible to prosecute these people unless you have a turncoat, somebody who can walk you through all those transactions,'' notes Ira Lee Sorkin, a former SEC regional director who was involved in the 1970s prosecutions. So long as the Street continues to keep silent on the Mob in its midst, organized crime will continue to be the silent partner of the financial markets.
businessweek.com |
