A Maltese mafia group took over the running of brothels and gambling in London’s Soho district for nearly two decades until the 1980s, leading to a major police crackdown into widespread bribery and corruption.   

The late Frank Mifsud, known as ‘Big Frank’, was at the head of this organised crime syndicate which is believed to have worked with well-known gangsters such as the Kray bothers and infiltrated the top ranks of Scotland Yard to take control of vice in a large chunk of the UK capital.

Journalist Matthew Vella has published what he says is the “first-ever” comprehensive history of the Maltese syndicate in his new book Passport To Vice.

It details the exploits of 18-stone Frank Mifsud at the head of this Mafia group and his dealings with the Maltese who worked for him.

Few would have known the history of Frank Saviour Mifsud, who could be seen walking on the Sliema seafront promenade, where he spent the last years of his life until his death in 2017.

Journalist Matthew Vella's new book – Passport To Vice.

The one-time traffic policeman had left Malta in the 1950s to make a name for himself in the vice world of London’s Soho. He is believed to have recruited the Maltese to the Soho gang that would become known as ‘The Syndicate’, a vast call-girl empire built up in London over 20 years.

The lasting image of Mifsud is of a man moved by greed, easy violence and arm-twisting the law in his favour by the sheer power of his wealth.

Contemporaries who knew him personally and spoke to Vella concur with that view.

“If you take the police statements that syndicate members gave to Detective Chief Inspector Bert Wickstead in 1973, which is when a police corruption operation decided to end the syndicate, you find it hard to disagree with the view that Mifsud had formed a proper mafia, albeit with some shaky foundations," Vella said.

He sought to lay out the facts of what went on during this tumultuous period.

“I don’t think that, apart from saying ‘the Maltese controlled Soho’, we’ve had the story about the 1956 murder of Tommy Smithson, the sheer control Frank Mifsud exerted over his men, the firebombs in the 1960s, the constant bribery of witnesses and police, the attempted assassination of George Caruana and the dealings the Maltese had with the Krays,” Vella said.

The story begins with a Sicilian

Early in the 20th century, the Sicilian husband of Virginia Debono found fortune in the regulated sex industry of Egypt.

With two of his children being Maltese-born, the Messina family could wrangle British passports across the empire’s embassies all over North Africa, recruiting women, and marrying them off to deadbeat Maltese husbands to obtain passage to London.

While the Messinas transited from Egypt into London, a new batch of Maltese migrants were also making their name in the industry.

In Tiger Bay’s Bute Street in Cardiff, the Maltese set up cafés serving seamen from all over the world food, drink and women. And this pattern was replicated across many other dockland areas in the UK.

Vella identifies syndicate members who transited from Cardiff into London where they began life as pimps.

A murder

It was in 1956 that, planning a move out of the East End and into Soho, Frank Mifsud is said to have tasked Philip Ellul and Victor Spampinato with the murder of renowned hardman Tommy Smithson, an English gangster.

“That was the single move that gave the Maltese status in the eyes of the London gangsters that held sway, chiefly Billy Hill, who namedrops Mifsud in his biography.”

The syndicate then started moving into former Messina properties, real estate owned by John Gaul, putting up prostitutes in their flats, operating striptease clubs and running illegal gambling.

Vella writes that in 1967, Mifsud sat down with the Krays for a favour: a ‘frightener’ on rival club owner George Caruana.

“It was a mess. The Krays wanted to tie the Maltese up in a conspiracy by killing Caruana, so that they could crowbar their way into the Maltese clubs. When that assassination failed, London chief inspector Nipper Read used the conspiracy’s weakest elements to build a case against the Krays.”

Over the next five years, the Maltese supremacy, held in place by the weekly bribes to the top police brass, kickstarted an anti-corruption investigation.

The book has drawn some fire from Frank Mifsud’s family, including a cease-and-desist letter demanding that the book is not released and that any attempt to publicise certain details would be deemed hurtful to relatives of the late Mifsud, who died at 92.