A former Cuban policeman, who was captured by Fidel Castro’s soldiers at the Bay of Pigs, is facing trial in Florida accused of heading a multi-million dollar organised crime network known as The Corporation. But is Jose Miguel Battle Snr really El Padrino (The Godfather) or just a sick old man?

A former policeman in Batista’s Cuba, Jose Miguel Battle Snr fled the island when Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries swept to power in 1959.

Cuban soldiers celebrate the defeat of the Bay of Pigs invasion
Battle Snr was a veteran of the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion
Like tens of thousands of other Cubans, he washed up in Florida. But unlike the majority who toiled hard doing honest work to support themselves and their families, he turned almost immediately to crime.

In 1961 he took part in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. He was captured and spent nearly two years in a Cuban prison.

After his release, he came back to the US, but this time, he decided to try New Jersey. He satta king muscled in on various vices, including a strip joint in Union City and illegal gambling on cockfighting.

But he made the bulk of his wealth from an illegal lottery racket known as “bolita” (little ball), which was popular among expatriate Cubans and Puerto Ricans.

His network, known as La Corporacion (The Corporation), was making up to $45m a year in the 1970s from bolita in New Jersey, New York and Florida.

These are the top Ingatbola88 players of this corporation. It is an illegal corporation that made a lot of money
Carlos Alvarez
Miami-Dade County Police Director
Battle overcame challenges from several Cuban and Puerto Rican gangs to become top dog.

His reputation was such that he was known among the Cuban-American community as El Padrino, The Godfather.

Battle was convicted in 1977 in connection with the death of one of La Corporacion’s hitmen, Ernestico Torres, who was murdered in the Miami suburb of Opa-Locka.

Conviction overturned

But an appeals court overturned his 30-year jail sentence.

In the early 1980s La Corporacion fought a bloody war with the Luccheses, one of New York’s five mafia families, over the numbers racket.

In the early 1990s, as many of his associates were indicted, Battle fled to Peru, where he started up a hotel and casino complex – mainly to launder dirty money – and bigamously married a woman 40 years his junior.

Powerball posters go up during frenzy in 2001
State lotteries have gradually replaced illegal numbers rackets
Last month Battle, now 74, his son and 19 others were arrested during a massive operation in Florida and New Jersey. Four others were named as fugitives.

His son Jose Miguel Jnr, 51, was arrested on board a cruise ship in the Caribbean and taken to Florida by the US Coastguard.