In the 1930s Edradour Distillery was owned by a blender and merchant, William Whiteley.
Whiteley had been in business since the 1920s and profited from the Prohibition era by partnering with the Mafia.
For those with connections, money and the ambition, ‘The Lawless Years’, as they were called, were a time for prosperity. The Mafia were ideally placed to take advantage of the situation and provide a much sought after service to the community. The police and coastguard officers were as keen as the next person for a drink and it wasn’t long before a system of bribes was established to allow real Scotch whisky and other spirits to land on their shores. Ships laden with alcohol would drop anchor 12 miles off the coast so as to be outside the jurisdiction of any over zealous coastguard official. Smaller, faster boats would then pull-up alongside and move the precious cargo to awaiting trucks at makeshift landing points.
The general route for Scotch whisky was to first land in Canada and then head towards to big cities on the east coast; Boston, New York and New Jersey, from where the loot would be distributed.
The man who led this organised activity on behalf of the Mafia was Frank Costello, a rising star in the underworld.
Apart from being the inspiration for Mario Puzo’s character Don Corleone in his book The Godfather, Frank Costello was a visionary gangster and a shrewd businessman who preferred to use bribes rather than violence.
His first reaction to Prohibition was to visit the tiny island of St Pierre just off the coast of Newfoundland. Here, Costello charmed the local Mayor, promised to provide jobs for the local community and agreed to pay a commission per case of whisky that went through the island. Within days warehouses were being built, the pier was strengthened and shipments of whisky started to arrive from Scotland.
Paranoid about the consequences of tax evasion the Mafia weren’t keen on meticulously accurate record keeping, so it is impossible to know how much business Whiteley conducted between 1920 and 1933 with his distributors in America but the fact that Whiteley sold his whisky into America during Prohibition and had a working relationship with Costello is clear from subsequent biographies and court records.
According to one version of events ‘Costello imported so much of their (Whiteley’s) whisky during Prohibition that as a gesture of thanks he was appointed US Sales Consultant on an annual salary of $5000.’ Costello’s role as Sales Consultant was to instruct his men to visit bars and clubs in New York and ensure that they stocked Whiteley’s products. No doubt the consequences of not stocking them would have been made clear.
In 1938 William Whiteley wanted to retire and sell his interests, which included two very big brands, King’s Ransom and House of Lords, and the Edradour Distillery.
Through a convoluted route these assets were sold to an American called Irving Haim. The question is why would Irving Haim, a known bootlegger, be interested in a modest whisky business that had several core brands and the smallest distillery in Scotland?
Well, Irving Haim wasn’t just any American; Irving Haim was connected to Frank Costello who was now at the very top of the Mafia.
In 1950 the US Senate established a special committee to investigate crime in interstate commerce. Understandably Frank Costello was called to the Senate hearings regarding his business activities. At the hearings he said that he had tried to purchase the Whiteley companies without success and that his reason for wanting to buy them was so that his “liquor distribution business”, Alliance Distributors, would have exclusive rights to distribute the Whiteley brands throughout the USA. The brands he was referring to were King’s Ransom and House of Lords.
Costello stated that the deal wasn’t done, but Irving Haim was a known associate of Costello’s and Alliance Distributors were the sole distributors of Whiteley’s brands for many years after.
Find our more and read the book, visit www.edradourbook.com
No comments:
Post a Comment