Alleged Montreal Mafia leader Leonardo Rizzuto's law license suspended by Quebec bar
Weeks after the Rizzuto organization was hit by a major police investigation, the alleged leader of the Montreal Mafia has been suspended from practicing law.
On July 2, the Barreau du Québec, the regulatory body for Quebec lawyers, ordered the immediate suspension of Rizzuto's legal license.
He is accused of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, which are grounds for suspension under the Professional Code of Quebec.
Under Article 122.0.1, if a professional is accused of a crime that could lead to five years or more in prison, and it is believed the charges are linked to their professional work, authorities can request the disciplinary council to suspend their license while the case is being reviewed.
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Montreal Gazette
a day ago
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Alleged Montreal Mafia leader Stefano Sollecito has bail hearing in murder case
Montreal Crime By A Quebec Superior Court judge has begun hearing evidence in a request from Stefano Sollecito, an alleged leader of the Montreal Mafia, who is seeking a release on bail following his arrest in June in Project Alliance, an investigation that resulted in the arrests of several organized crime figures. Sollecito, 57, is seeking the release for health reasons. On Wednesday, he was brought into a prisoner's dock in the courtroom in a wheelchair and was assisted by two women who appeared to be nurses. One of the women moved his wheelchair around awkwardly, looking for a spot in the cramped space from which Sollecito could follow the hearing comfortably. When he was arrested in 2015, in Project Magot-Mastiff, a different investigation involving organized crime figures, he managed to get bail because he had cancer. Since then, Sollecito has lost a lot of his hair and he didn't appear to be in good health on Wednesday. Bettina Rizzuto, the sister of Leonardo Rizzuto, 56, another person who was arrested last month in Project Alliance, was in the courtroom. She stood up while the two women brought Sollecito into the courtroom and she waved to him. Justice Alexandre Boucher repeated an order that a publication ban has been placed on all of the evidence heard during Sollecito's bail hearing. The judge is expected to hear evidence over the course of two days. The first witness to testify on Wednesday was David Desrochers, a Montreal police detective and the lead investigator in Project Alliance. Sollecito, Rizzuto and other men are charged with the murder of Lorenzo LoPresti, who was killed on Oct. 24, 2011, in the St-Laurent borough. Sollecito and Rizzuto are also charged with conspiring to kill LoPresti and seven other organized crime figures between 2011 and 2019.
Montreal Gazette
11-07-2025
- Montreal Gazette
Opinion: Automatic release must be reformed for cases involving organized crime
Op Eds Montreal is in the middle of a quiet war. On one side, law enforcement scores rare wins like the June 12 arrests of alleged Mafia leaders including Leonardo Rizzuto and Stefano Sollecito in a sweeping police operation across Quebec. On the other, violence keeps erupting in incidents such as the fatal shooting of a man in a Brossard park on July 2, which Longueuil police said may have been gang-related. The problem isn't that police aren't doing their job. It's that the law keeps handing criminal networks a second life. Take Nicola Spagnolo. An alleged associate of the Rizzuto clan, he was serving time for a 2020 stabbing. He had been turned down for parole due in part to affiliations with organized crime denied by Spagnolo but noted by Correctional Service Canada (CSC). And yet, under Section 127 of the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (CCRA), he automatically qualified for release after serving two-thirds of his sentence — until he was arrested in June as a murder suspect in the same case as Rizzuto and Sollecito, while he was still behind bars. If no new charges had been filed, he would have walked free. This is not a flaw. It is a design failure. The CCRA's statutory release mechanism was built on ideals of rehabilitation and reintegration. But in cases involving links to organized crime, those ideals are being exploited. CSC's assessments flagged Spagnolo as 'an active member of a security threat group or organized crime.' Yet legally, that status wasn't enough to deny his release — because in Canada, an assessment of affiliation with organized crime alone does not qualify as a sufficient reason to override statutory release. This must change. Parliament should amend Section 127 to create an exception to automatic release for individuals with links to organized crime. This exception should not be based on subjective suspicion, but on clear CSC assessments, intelligence, and behavioural records while in custody. This is about protecting the public, not punishing indefinitely. In addition, Canada should implement a national threat profile registry, which would classify inmates based on their operational risk rather than just their criminal record. This registry would allow authorities to consider gang membership, leadership roles and persistent criminal associations in evaluating release eligibility. Similar models are already used in certain situations in jurisdictions like Germany and the Netherlands. Moreover, release should not mean freedom without oversight. Canada's statutory-release system does permit curfews, halfway-house residency and other conditions, yet safeguards are limited when release itself is mandatory. For individuals flagged under the proposed registry, electronic monitoring, communication bans and mandatory reintegration plans would be imposed for at least the duration of the original sentence. Reintegration isn't passive — it requires structured conditions and accountability. Provincial prosecutors should also be empowered to contest statutory releases when public safety is at stake. Currently, their involvement in release procedures is minimal, yet they are the most familiar with the real-life consequences of letting violent gang members return to the same neighbourhoods they helped destabilize. Beyond legal reform, there's a societal dimension. Communities affected by violence are not just crime scenes — they are often left to pay the price for legal leniency. Residents lose faith in public institutions when the same names cycle through headlines and courtrooms year after year. Fighting organized crime must include breaking the cycle of predictable impunity. Montreal cannot afford to wage war on organized crime with laws that seem designed for first-time offenders. This is not about being tough on crime — it's about being smart on structural threats. Organized criminal networks exploit every loophole available. It is time the law stopped helping them. We need sentencing legislation that reflects the complexity of modern criminal networks, prioritizes sustained community protection and restores trust in the justice system. For that to happen, automatic release for documented members of organized crime must end. Anything less is an invitation to repeat the same cycle, with more victims next time.
CTV News
05-07-2025
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Quebec bar suspends law licence of alleged Mafia leader Leonardo Rizzuto
MONTREAL — MONTREAL — Quebec's bar association has suspended the lawyer's licence of Leonardo Rizzuto, who was one of 11 people arrested last month in a police operation targeting organized crime. The Barreau du Québec announced this week that it had provisionally suspended Rizzuto's licence as of July 2. The 56-year-old is the son of the late crime boss Vito Rizzuto and the presumed head of one of Canada's most notorious crime families. He and six other men have been charged with first-degree murder in the 2011 killing of alleged Montreal Mafia member Lorenzo Lopresti. The joint police operation last month by Montreal and Quebec provincial police led to the arrest of 11 men between 27 and 57 years old, who police allege are associated with the Mafia, the Hells Angels and street gangs. The suspects allegedly participated in several murders and attempted murders between 2011 and 2021. The suspension said Rizzuto, who obtained his licence in 1999, had practised law in Montreal and Laval. This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 5, 2025.
