Head-of-State Assassination by Mobsters?

Because killing by terrorists is too mainstream.

Is it possible that organized crime mounted such force and vendetta that they go on to kill an important head of state?

Bonus point if this is in Europe, Russia, or North America. Specify the crime groups if you can.

Think this as The Jackal gone wrong.

Thanks in advance!
 

MSZ

Banned
I may be wrong, but I think Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger had the villian (a guy who worked for a Columbian drug cartel) plan to assasinate the president of Columbia, followed by using the cartels wealth to install another, more friendly president, so to expand the illegal mob into a legal business-industrial-political empire. Or something like that, I haven't read the novel in a long time.

Anyway, killing a head of state is worse than killing a policeman - try that in any country, and you will end up with all of the country's resources used to catch the perpetrators (and not being subtle about it). So other than one country paying mobsters to kill other countries heads of states to destabilize them, I don't think such a trend could really be set - it would be "bad for business".
 
While it wasn't killing an active head of state, the gangster Dutch Schultz did seek to have Thomas Dewey killed. The mob refused- which may have led to Schultz's death. If he had succeeded, who knows what might have happened?
 
Not quite the same thing but I'm fairly sure that Pablo Escobar had at least a couple of people who were running for President of Colombia killed.
 
Assassination--not always difficult

Assassinating heads of state has, historicly, been relatively do-able--the problem is surviving afterwards. Mob hitmen usually expect to have a good chance of escape, or at worst, geting off on technicalities. Other times, the mob will threaten jurors/judges, etc....this won't work in the case of a head of state being murdered.

So, they need a disposable patsy--and then, the ploy might fail. Most assassination atempts fail--they need to get it set up perfectly.

And it won't matter which family is implicated--the government involved will close them all down. BAD plan all round--but possible.
 
Yeah, it's possible that some Italian leader gets deeply in bed with the Mob and then betrays them at some point: I don't think an attempted assassination is beyond the pale under shuch circumstances. However, going with the Cuban example, the Mob was enormously influential in Cuba before Casto took over: in the case of some smaller Caribbean nation, might not the mob (after making it into a chief "laundering" center) effectively take over the local economy and government to the point where the rubbing out of a rebellious head of state is just part of doing business?

Bruce
 
Didin't the Sicilian Mafia make an attempt at killing Mussolini, during the period when he was suppressing them?
 
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