According to the press in Canada, Mike Di Battista, the Canadian shot and killed in his vehicle in Sosúa on the evening of Sunday, 24 March 2019, had connections with several international criminal organizations linked to drug-trafficking. The Dominican police said inside the car in which he was murdered were two passports, one Italian and one Canadian.
On 4 February 2015, CTV news in Montreal had reported that Mike Battista and Mathieu Bouchard were fugitives from the law in connection with the dismantling of a mafia group who used a sophisticated method of mixing drugs in asphalt, known as molecular pairing.
Those involved were known as the Silvano cell and were also linked to the Bastone and De Vito groups, some of whom were arrested in 2014 in an operation called Clemenza Project.
In 2015 Mike Di Battista was arrested by Interpol and the National Police and was handed over the Canadian authorities in the terminal of El Catey airport in Samana.
It appears that, according to TVA Nouvelles in Canada, Di Battista was released from jail in March 2017 together with the others arrested back in 2015.
It is thought that Di Battista was using his home in the Dominican Republic as a transition point for the drugs.
It is not known how Di Battista was able to return to the country following his deportation.
Read more:
TVA Nouvelles
Listin Diario
27 March 2019