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10 MATTHEW VELLA FEW would have known the histo- ry of Frank Saviour Mifsud, one of Sliema's many residents who could be seen walking on the seafront promenade, where he spent the last years of his life. 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, where his 18-stone build would ultimately earn him the moniker that hinted at a violent temper: 'Big Frank' Mifsud, who recruited the Mal- tese to the Soho gang that would become known as 'The Syndicate', a vast call-girl empire built up in London over 20 years. The foundations of the gang were laid by a family of Sicilians who at one time lived in Malta, the Messi- na brothers, who followed on their father's footsteps as brothel-keep- ers. In the UK they took up English names – Eugenio became Edward Marshal, Carmelo became Charles Maitland, Alfredo became Alfred Martin, Salvatore became Arthur Evans and Atillio became Raymond Maynard – by the late 1940s they were operating 30 houses of pros- titution on Queen Street, Bond Street and Stafford Street. When Scotland Yard swept the gang away in the 1950s, the foun- dations for Maltese gangsters were laid. Bernie Silver, born in 1922 into a Jewish family from the East End, joined forces with former traffic po- liceman Frank Mifsud, their rise to prominence beginning in the 1950s by taking over the remnants of the Italian Messina Brothers gang. Starting off with one strip-club in Bower Street, by the late 60s Mifsud and Silver controlled some 19 of Soho's 24 strip-clubs. The prostitutes operating for it in Soho and Mayfair earned be- tween £200 and £500 a week. The Syndicate acquired property in Soho, running strip clubs in the basement or ground floors. In the floors above, prostitutes operated full-time in separate flats, for which they paid £100-a-week rent. In the vice crime trial of the Bernie Silver gang of 1974, the Maltese Syndicate met its demise. Silver and nine men, mostly Mal- tese, were charged with living off immoral earnings between 1955 and 1973. Frank Mifsud dodged arrest when the gang was rounded up, but was detained in Switzerland and held in custody there. With Silver, Mifsud was the main principal of the Syndicate. "These men indeed have made a rich living," prosecutor Michael Corkery said at the trial. Docu- ments found in Silver's Knights- bridge flat revealed ownership of a twin-diesel yacht, credit facilities in a Belgian bank, and property inter- ests in the Channel islands. "That's just the tip of the iceberg," Corkery told the court, saying the Syndicate acted as rent collectors from some 30 Soho prostitution houses. The Met police said the Syndi- cate would collect over £100,000 in rents from prostitutes every week. Mifsud and Silver almost never dealt directly with girls, leaving the collection to the their front-men, who collected the cash from pros- titutes, deducted their own fees, then passed the remainder on to the bosses. "So the Syndicate pros- pered with the main characters keeping in the background al the time. They hid behind the others successfully for many years until the day of reckoning came," the prosecutor had said. Soho vice trials The day of reckoning came in December 1973, when freelance reporters working for the News of the World investigated the vice world in and around Soho, leading Scotland Yard to carry out inquir- ies that led to the bust of the crime ring. At the height of the Syndicate's influence, most of the Metropoli- tan Police's Obscene Publications Squad were in the Syndicate's pay, including its head Detective Chief Superintendent Bill Moody. But a 1969 Times exposé of police fram- ing small-time criminals, and of- fering not to press charges in ex- change for money or information, started to slowly unravel the Syndi- cate's network. A series of other trials and ex- poses revealed a general picture of police-criminal links. Particularly favoured were Silver and Mifsud, with the discovery of a detailed ledger of the Syndicate's police pay- offs during a raid on the home of Silver associate Jimmy Humphreys. It led to hundreds of dismissals, forced retirements and the cor- ruption trials of 1976–77 which re- sulted in 13 detectives – including News maltatoday SUNDAY 10 DECEMBER 2017 Death of a Soho gangster Clip-joint king 'Big Frank' Mifsud died at 91 in Malta, where he retired after running a violent vice enterprise in London's Soho for some 20 years. Prostitution, gambling, bribery and even murder was the legacy of the Silver-Mifsud gang they called 'the Maltese Syndicate' 18-stone gangster: Frank Mifsud smiles for the camera. He died, aged 91, in Malta, where he lived on the Sliema seafront, after returning here in the 1970s when he was acquitted of having commissioned a hit on another gangster So famous... Mifsud is extradited to the UK to face charges in the Silver-Mifsud gang vice bust that also led to the corruption trials of Scotland Yard detectives, but Mifsud lived to see another day when he was cleared of ordering a hit on protection racketteer 'Scarface' Smithson