Drug trafficking

Swiss offshore tax whistleblower faces possible extradition

Topics: 
White-collar crime, Financial industry, Whistleblowers, Drug trafficking, Organized crime
Rating: 
0

Giles Tremlett – April 26, 2013

When he appeared in a Madrid court, banking whistleblower Hervé Falciani was disguised with a wig and thick-framed glasses. Facing extradition, the man behind the "Lagarde list" of potential tax cheats said in a newspaper interview he had fled to Spain last year when the US authorities told him it was the only country in Europe where his life would not be in danger.

Now Falciani, 41, whose spectacular theft of account data from a Swiss subsidiary of HSBC in 2006-7 has helped uncover thousands of wealthy tax fraudsters, is about to find out if he will be extradited to Switzerland, where he faces prosecution and up to seven years in jail.

Canada’s missing $1,000 bills: in the hands of criminal elites

Topics: 
Organized crime, Financial industry, Drug trafficking
Rating: 
3
The following are selected extracts

Adrian Humphreys – Nov 15, 2012

More than 10 years after the $1,000 bill disappeared from circulation 946,043 of them are still out there, somewhere. The whereabouts of almost $1-billion worth of the banknotes is a mystery rekindled this month at Quebec’s corruption probe when a witness spoke of a safe over-stuffed with cash, including $1,000 notes, inside a political office.

Retired on May 12, 2000, for being mostly used in criminal transactions, any $1,000 note deposited at a bank is destroyed, although the bills — nicknamed “pinkies” by gangsters because of the pinkish-purple ink — remain legal tender.

Gun traffic from U.S. to Canada expands

Topics: 
Organized crime, Drug trafficking
Rating: 
0

Dan Freedman – May 20, 2012

Criminal groups and terrorists north of the border are borrowing a page from the Mexican drug cartel playbook and buying weapons smuggled from the U.S. that are generally unavailable in Canada.

Though the numbers are small compared to the southbound flow of guns to Mexico, U.S. gun traffickers are using similar methods to ferry guns northward.They hire "straw" purchasers to buy guns in Florida, Alabama, Ohio, Michigan and other states, and send them over border crossings that include Buffalo, Detroit and Washington state.

B.C. skipper evaded prosecution in Canada, convicted in U.S.

Topics: 
RCMP, Drug trafficking
Rating: 
3

Man faces long jail term for 400-kilos of cocaine on sailboat

Sun Kim Bolan – May 7, 2012

A controversial B.C. skipper has been convicted by a Florida jury of illegally carrying 400 kilos of cocaine on his sailboat off the coast of Colombia last fall.

John (Phil) Stirling has evaded criminal prosecution in B.C. twice after being caught on vessels with huge quantities of drugs — in 2001 with $300 million worth of cocaine and in 2006 with $6.5 million worth of marijuana.

The lethal war on Mexico’s journalists

Topics: 
Corruption, Organized crime, Drug trafficking, Freedom of the press, Mexico
Rating: 
2

John Ralston Saul – June 3, 2011

Mexico’s human-rights rhetoric is second to none. It has been like this for a decade. The government has signed or ratified more than 20 human-rights treaties and considered more than 1,000 recommendations from various human-rights organizations.

These fine words and political gestures contradict the failure of successive administrations to tackle the reality of Mexican corruption and impunity – issues intensified by President Felipe Calderon’s “war on drugs.”

Mexican Poet inspires people's movement against drug cartels, corruption

Topics: 
Organized crime, Drug trafficking, Videos, Mexico
Rating: 
0

May 22, 2011

Over 35,000 people have died in Mexico’s drug war in the past four years. Many of them were innocent civilians, killed at random by the drug cartels in retaliation for the government’s crackdown on their trade. (15 min)

Video journalist Yaara Bou Melhem meets one of the most vocal people in the fight for action: poet Javier Sicilia, whose son and six friends were victims.

Free speech too costly for Mexican journalists

Topics: 
Corruption, Organized crime, Drug trafficking, Freedom of the press, Mexico
Rating: 
0

Olivia Ward – June 2, 2011

For vacationing Canadians, Mexico is a haven of rest and recreation. But outside the cloistered confines of resorts, death takes no holiday for journalists trying to expose the brutality and corruption surrounding the country’s ongoing “war on drugs.”

A report released Friday says Canada should not turn a blind eye to violations of Mexican journalists’ rights, and that newly appointed Foreign Minister John Baird should put the defence of their rights on his agenda.

Canadian 'drug mafia don' flees Indian prison

Topics: 
Organized crime, Drug trafficking, Asia
Rating: 
3

Adrian Humphreys – May 6, 2011

Embarrassed officials in India are searching for a Canadian dubbed the "drug mafia don from Canada" who escaped from prison on a motorcycle in the midst of his trial, where he stands accused of running that country's largest methamphetamine factory.

Xie Jing Feng, 52, a Canadian citizen also known as Richard, was at a food stall across from the prison in Vadodara, where he was in custody pending his high-profile drug case, when he asked one of his three guards to undo his handcuffs so he could wash his face.

Mexican officials take a bribe – or a bullet

Topics: 
Organized crime, Drug trafficking, Mexico
Rating: 
2

The drug cartel La Familia gives local officials a choice: Take a bribe or a bullet.

William Finnegan – May 31, 2010

On the morning before I arrived in Zitácuaro, a beautiful hill town in the western Mexican state of Michoacán, the dismembered body of a young man was left in the middle of the main intersection.

It was what people call corpse messaging. Usually it involves a mutilated body—or a pile of bodies, or just a head—and a handwritten sign. “Talked too much.” “So that they learn to respect.” “You get what you deserve.”

Crack: Drug fuels Calgary crime wave

Topics: 
Organized crime, Drug trafficking
Rating: 
3

Michael Wood – February 9, 2011

Calgary—It is a scourge on our city, what cops say is the driving force behind most petty and property crimes and a common factor among numerous murders on our streets.

It is estimated to cost Alberta millions annually in related health care expenditures, loss of productivity and stolen property — from the bike scooped out of your neighbour’s garage to thousands of dollars worth of high-end gear lifted each week from Calgary merchants.

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