by Rusty Pugh and Jody Brown
(AgapePress) – Government lawyers are back in court in Chicago today, appealing a federal judge's ruling that suppressed evidence they say would prove a link between organized crime and abortion.
World magazine reports that after years of delay, the trial of a reputed Chicago Mafia boss seems imminent. Federal prosecutors have been building a case against Anthony Centracchio, owner of the A.C.T. Medical Center, a Chicago abortion clinic. Federal prosecutors say the A.C.T. Medical Center is actually a Mafia front, from which one of the city's most powerful reputed mobsters ran a multimillion-dollar empire built on gambling, bribery, pornography and extortion.
Government lawyers want evidence gathered during three years of surveillance to be admitted in Centracchio's trial. World reports that among other things, the evidence includes video recordings of Centracchio in his office at the Medical Center receiving extorted “street tax” payments from owners of Chicago adult bookstores and porn theaters, and sifting through piles of cash to sort out payments for various officials on his payroll. Prosecutors are also planning to call up to 150 witnesses, including about 70 FBI agents involved in the investigation.
Rumors of ties between the Mafia and the abortion business have been circulating for years. Mafia experts have scoffed at the idea, saying organized crime views abortion as a “nasty business” that would not be approved by Mafia bosses, particularly the older ones. But abortion clinics generate lots of untraceable cash, which World says seems like a natural fit for the mafia. The magazine says clinic owners can gross as much as a quarter-million dollars a month in unreported, untraceable cash. One former clinic owner who has since defected to the pro-life side calls the business a “cash cow” that is “completely shrouded in secrecy.”
Until now, documentation of links between abortion clinics and organized crime did not exist. If the government's case against Centracchio proves true, this would be the first solid case to try and prove it.
(This update courtesy of Agape Press.)
