pentito (state witness) in 1996, Caruana was sentenced to death by Sicilian Mafia Commission in the early stages of the Second Mafia War. His brother Leonardo was killed on 2 September 1981 on the order of Totò Riina. Di Carlo was ordered to carry out the killing of Alfonso Caruana and Pasquale Cuntrera, but refused, which resulted in Di Carlo's suspension from the organization. Cocaine trafficker Meanwhile, Caruana organised a network that smuggled eleven metric tonnes of cocaine to Italy from 1991-94. Caruana brought together the cocaine producers of the Colombian Cartels with the Italian distributors, six 'Ndrangheta families from Calabria. At the time the Cuntrera-Caruana family was labeled as "the fly-wheel of the drug trade and the indispensable link between suppliers and distributors." The investigation, code-named Operation Cartagine, started when the police seized 5,497 kilos of cocaine (a European record at the time) in March 1994 in Turin. A year later the Turin Prosecutors Office presented the indictment. The operation neutralized the most important supply-line of narcotics to Europe, investigators claimed. Later years and convictions In March 1995, Caruana filed for bankruptcy after declaring $250 worth of assets following a notice of assessment from Revenue Canada to pay $8.6 million in unpaid taxes, plus accrued interest and various penalties accounting for $21.2 million. In early 1997, Revenue Canada took him to Quebec Superior Court in Montreal to challenge his bankruptcy claims. Caruana claimed to be a carwash attendant that made $400 per week, however had Swiss bank accounts in his name, of which $21 million was moved through; he claimed most of the money belonged to his uncle Pasquale Cuntrera. Revenue Canada was unsuccessful in recovering the amounts due, as Caruana was officially bankrupt on paper; he was ordered to pay a mere $90,000 over a three-year period. Caruana was sentenced in absentia on July 30, 1997, by the Palermo court of appeal to 21 years and 10 months for Mafia association, conspiracy to traffic narcotics and aggravated importing, possession and sale of large quantities of narcotics for his involvement in heroin trafficking in the 1980s. At the same time he was prosecuted in Turin for cocaine trafficking in the 1990s. The Palermo court concluded that the network was "a further indication of the high criminal capability" of Caruana who had "escaped every judicial initiative during the last decades and succeeded in reaching the top of the international drug