At least 35 people wiretapped for a year, dozens of individuals arrested during the investigation and their homes searched, more than 150 electronic devices seized and analyzed, or in the process of being analyzed: the complexity of the investigation surrounding the revelations of former hitman Frédérick Silva forces the prosecution to ask the Court for permission to keep until next September items found with suspects, including the alleged murderers of the boss Ducarme Joseph.
Published at 6:00 a.m.
Silva, who has worked for several branches of Montreal organized crime, decided to collaborate with the police on June 30, 2022 and for more than two and a half years now, a major investigation, called Alliance, led by the City Police Department of Montreal and the Sûreté du Québec, is in progress.
“Alliance brings together active murder and attempted murder investigations […] involving several subjects who are in the upper echelons of organized crime in Quebec,” writes detective sergeant Laurent Villemaire of the SPVM in a sworn declaration in support of a motion filed by the prosecution.
The latter had already obtained an extension of the detention of the objects seized from the suspects, but it is requesting a new one, in particular because certain devices were partially or not at all searched, or their contents, not completely analyzed.
“Given the extraordinary volume that some device extraction reports can represent depending on what was selected in the device, this task is very tedious. For example, I have been told that PDF extraction reports from cellular devices in a file linked to Alliance alone are approximately several thousand pages long. From experience, I can say that these reports very often contain several hundred pages,” adds Mr. Villemaire.
Joseph: three suspects identified
According to the motion filed last fall, Silva made disclosures about more than sixty murders and attempted murders in which he was directly or indirectly involved.
The Press has already revealed, among other things, that Silva organized the murder, in 2014, of gang leader Ducarme Joseph, suspected of having been involved in the assassination, in December 2009, of Nicola Rizzuto Jr., eldest son of the late godfather of the Vito Rizzuto mafia. After Joseph’s murder, Silva became a member of the Sicilian clan.
In its request, the prosecution asks to keep until next September telephones and electronic devices seized from three individuals suspected of having participated in the murder of Joseph: Jimmy Duplan, Adrian Prehay and Leonel Luc.
-When Prehay was arrested in December 2023, investigators found a gun in his home and he was sentenced to three years in prison on December 18.
In addition to two phones and a mini-tablet, a sum of $102,000 was also seized from Mr. Luc and the authorities are also requesting an extension of the confiscation.
Destruction avoided, items recovered
Without specifying for what crime alleged, the prosecution also asks to keep until the end of the summer electronic devices and documents found with a former confidant of Silva, Girard Anglade.
These objects were seized from Anglade after the latter was arrested for an attempted murder committed against Jean-Guy Bourgouin, while the ex-biker was leaving a restaurant in the Saint-Léonard district, in January 2018 .
When Judge Hélène Morin of the Court of Quebec sentenced Anglade in 2020, she ordered the disposal of the seized property, but this was never done, and the investigators were able to recover the items in the room (exhibits) of the Montreal courthouse.
Finally, two last individuals targeted by the request, but we do not know why they were because this information is redacted in the document, are Nicko Belisle and Mario Sollecito.
Investigators seized two phones from the latter while he was at Trudeau Airport in January 2024. Mario Sollecito is one of the brothers of Stefano Sollecito, still considered by the police as the co-leader of the Sicilian mafia clan Montreal.
Note that none of the six individuals targeted by the request have yet been accused of anything related to the former killer’s revelations.
The debate on the motion will continue next week at the Montreal courthouse.
To contact Daniel Renaud, call 514 285-7000, ext. 4918, write to [email protected] or write to the postal address of La Presse.