Sicilian mobsters are planning to set up shop in Cuba once President Fidel Castro is gone from the scene, GQ magazine reports in its May issue.

Mafia families want to use hotel, casino and public works projects to launder money and profiteer, GQ said in an article headlined Big Trouble in Havana, quoting U.S. and Italian law-enforcement officials.

``I warned [Cuban officials] of this danger,'' an Italian law-enforcement official with experience in the Caribbean told El Nuevo Herald. But, he said, given the government's hunger for foreign investment, ``I don't think they are taking much time to smell the money.''

He agreed with the GQ article that the Italian Mafia would oppose any participation in Cuban projects by U.S. organized-crime groups. If they entered the picture, U.S. law enforcement would be close behind.

GQ names St. Martin, in the Dutch Antilles, as a key organized-crime staging area for Cuba, and Rosario Spadaro, an Italian businessman with two hotels and two casinos there, as a financier with Mafia ties who is likely to be a key figure in future organized-crime ventures in Cuba.

Asked by El Nuevo Herald if he has any Mafia ties, Spadaro laughed and said, ``Unfortunately not, or I wouldn't have any financial problem.'' He was arrested in 1993 for allegedly diverting $13 million from airport and seaport expansion projects on St. Martin, but was acquitted.

``I have never been in Cuba in my life and have no business interests there,'' Spadaro added.

The Italian mobsters don't have a monopoly on plans for the post-Castro era. William Mitchell of Miami, former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration office in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and a source for the GQ story, said Colombian crime organizations are also planning to do big-time business in Cuba.