December 31, 2020 – According to federal prosecutors in New York, the city’s top construction labor boss John Cahill, bragged of his connections to the city’s Italian and Irish mobs, even boasting of being the city’s last remaining “Westie,” on a March 2020 FBI wire. The revelation came this week in a court filing made by prosecutors objecting to Cahill’s motion requesting to be let off home confinement as he awaits trial on racketeering, fraud and bribery charges. Cahill, 71, is the head of the New York State Building & Construction Trades Council. He was indicted in October and has pleaded not guilty. His brother, reputed Irish wiseguy Mickey Cahill and his brother-in-law, reputed Irish mob figure Francis (Buddy) Leahy, were part of The Westies, New York’s now-defunct Irish mob centered in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. While allegedly accepting a $3,000 bribe from a cooperating FBI informant, John Cahill was caught telling the cooperator of his past ties to the Dapper Don himself (Cahill and his cohorts are accused of tallying $100,000 in bribes in a two-year period to allow non-union labor on construction sites). “John (Gotti) was like this (crossing his fingers) with my brother and my brother-in-law and this guy named Bosko, that was his crew, that was his Irish crew.” Gotti ran New York’s Gambino crime family, the crown jewel of the American Italian mob, in the late 1980s amidst nationwide headlines for his flashy behavior and bold leadership style. Put in prison in 1990 for murder and racketeering, Gotti, dubbed the Dapper Don by the NY tabloid press, died of cancer behind bars in 2002. The Gambinos forged an alliance with The Westies in the 1970s. The last vestige of the group was overseen by Serbian Bosko (The Yugo) Radonjic in the 1990s. Radonjic left the country for his native Yugoslavia in March 2001 following a 15-month prison stay. Mickey Cahill and Buddy Leahy were a part of Radonjic’s inner circle, per federal records, and prior to that worked for his Westies boss predecessors, Jimmy Coonan and Kevin Kelly. John Cahill’s indictment also accuses him of taking meetings with members of a Serbian organized crime crew in New York. Cahill’s brother and brother-in-law donated $5,000 to the political campaign of Carlos Manzano in his bid for the Manhattan Borough President post in 2005. According to court filings, Mickey Cahill and Leahy paid protection to Gotti and the Gambinos in their operating of a New Jersey construction company.
