Rizzuto clan head pleads guilty to tax evasion

Nicolo (Nick) Rizzuto, the presumed patriarch of Canada's most well-known Mafia clan, has pleaded guilty in Montreal to tax evasion.

Rizzuto, 85, showed upfor his brief hearing at the Montreal courthouse Thursday morning, where he entered his guilty plea as his lawyer stood nearby.

He was accused of failing to declare interest revenues in 1994 and 1995 onmore than $5 million deposited in three Swiss bank accounts.

The judge ordered Rizzuto to pay a $209,000 fine and taxes on the Swiss accounts.

The Crown attorney couldn't say why it took the Canada Revenue Agency so long to finalizethe tax evasioninvestigation.

Father of reputed Mafia boss

Rizzuto flashed reporters a smile on his way out of the courthouse after his 10-minute hearing.

Heis the father of reputed Mafia boss Vito Rizzuto, who is serving time in a U.S. institution forracketeering.

He is also grandfather of the recently slain Nick Rizzuto, who was gunned down in broad daylight in Montreal last December in what many observers called an underworld retaliation.

Nicolo Rizzuto is already on parole on separate gangsterism-related charges, to which he pleaded guilty last year and was handed a suspended sentence.

He was arrested in 2006 after a massive four-year police investigation that targeted more than 70 alleged members of Montreal's Mafia organization.