Former Bonanno boss Vincent “Vinny Gorgeous” Basciano ordered a hit on an associate because he was an “ambitious” and “ruthless” gangster, trying to tighten his stranglehold on power by brutally suppressing mob-family dissent, prosecutors charged yesterday.

Basciano “ordered the murder of Randolph Pizzolo, who disrespected and disobeyed the defendant and paid for it with his life,” Assistant US Attorney Stephen Frank told jurors yesterday in his closing argument in Brooklyn federal court. Pizzolo, a Bonanno associate considered reckless and insubordinate, was later gunned down in Brooklyn, in 2004.

Secret recordings of Basciano’s conversations as well as testimony from former Bonannos who became government informants — most notably Basciano’s predecessor as boss, “Big Joey” Massino — demonstrated overwhelmingly that Basciano gave the order to kill Pizzolo from behind bars, prosecutors argued. But in his closing, Basciano’s defense attorney, George Goltzer, insisted prosecutors had not proven their case.

“At times in his life, he was a hoodlum,” Goltzer conceded. “But he didn’t kill Randy Pizzolo.”