Tropicana Club

Santo Trafficante at San Souci’s bar. Havana, Cuba, 1955

Santo Trafficante Jr. (November 15, 1914 – March 17, 1987) was among the most powerful Mafia bosses in the United States. He headed the Trafficante crime family and controlled organized criminal operations in Florida and Cuba, which had previously been consolidated from several rival gangs by his father, Santo Trafficante Sr. Reputedly the most powerful crime boss in Batista-era Cuba, he never served a prison sentence in the US. Trafficante turned his father's criminal organization into a multi-billion dollar international organized crime empire. Trafficante was reportedly a multi-billionaire and wielded enormous power and influence all over the United States and Cuba by paying off police, judges, federal prosecutors, city officials, government officials, local and international politicians, mayors, governors, senators, congressmen, CIA agents and FBI agents.

Trafficante maintained links to the Bonanno crime family, in New York City, but was more closely allied with Sam Giancana in Chicago. Consequently, while generally recognized as the most powerful organized crime figure in Florida throughout much of the 20th century, Trafficante was not believed to have total control over Miami, Miami Beach, Ft. Lauderdale, or Palm Beach. The east coast of Florida was a loosely knit conglomerate of New York family interests with links to Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Angelo Bruno, Carlos Marcello, and Frank Ragano.

Trafficante admitted his anti-Castro activities to the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978. Though he vehemently denied any association with a conspiracy against President John F. Kennedy, at least one witness before federal investigators testified that Trafficante predicted the assassination in spring of 1963. Federal investigators brought racketeering and conspiracy charges against him in summer of 1986. Santo Trafficante Jr. had been operating in Cuba since the late 1940s under his father, Santo Trafficante Sr., a mobster in Tampa, Florida. After his father died in 1954, he became the head in Tampa and took over his father's interests in Cuba.[8]

Tropicana present-day

Trafficante moved to Cuba in 1955, where he came into contact with Batista and Meyer Lansky. During the rule of Cuba's authoritarian dictator Fulgencio Batista, Trafficante openly operated the Sans Souci Cabaret and the Casino International gambling establishments in Havana. As a leading member of the syndicate, he also was suspected of having behind-the-scenes interests in other syndicate-owned Cuban casinos: the Hotel Habana Riviera, the Tropicana Club, the Hotel Sevilla-Biltmore, the Hotel Capri Casino, the Comodoro, the Hotel Deauville, and the Havana Hilton. Trafficante was apprehended in November 1957, along with over 60 other mobsters, at the Apalachin meeting in Apalachin, New York.[8] All were fined, up to $10,000 each, and given prison sentences ranging from three to five years. All the convictions were overturned on appeal in 1960.[9][10] Cuba was one of the Apalachin topics of discussion, particularly the gambling and narcotics smuggling interests of La Cosa Nostra on the island. The international narcotics trade was also an important topic on the Apalachin agenda. In January 1958, Trafficante was questioned by the Cuban police regarding the Apalachin meeting. A full report was made by the Cuban police, dated January 23, 1958, includes transcripts of long-distance telephone calls made from the Sans Souci during the period August–December 1957. The report was given to the District Attorney's office. In addition, "on January 23, 1958, the Cuban Department of Investigation, Havana, Cuba notified the Bureau of Narcotics that Santo Trafficante was registered in their Alien Office under No. 93461."