Pubdate: Fri, 12 Dec 2014
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2014 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Kim Bolan
Page: A1

CARTEL CONNECTION

Mexican cartels are bypassing the middleman and sending their own
agents into Vancouver to arrange drug shipments and launder money. The
Sun's Kim Bolan investigates.

Infamous Mexican cartels like Sinaloa and La Familia have sent
representatives to the Lower Mainland to broker drug deals with local
gangs, The Vancouver Sun has learned.

A Sun investigation has uncovered increasing links between B.C. drug
gangs and the notoriously violent cartels that have wreaked havoc
along Mexico's northern border.

For years, local crime groups travelled south to the U.S. and Mexico
to work with the cartels. Police now confirm that the Mexican crime
groups have moved members north so they can be on the ground in B.C.
and other parts of Canada. Calgary Police recently revealed that
cartel members are also operating in that Alberta city.

Vancouver Police Supt. Mike Porteous said the cartels have changed
their business model, currently preferring to have their own people
based in Canada to arrange cocaine shipments into the country.

"The interesting trend that I think we've seen over the last couple of
years is the cartels are bypassing the middleman," Porteous said in an
interview. "So they are bypassing Tom Gisby and Larry Amero and guys
like that."

Metro Vancouver gangsters like Gisby and Amero used to travel to
Mexico to make their deals. Gisby was shot dead inside a Starbucks in
Nuevo Vallarta in April 2012. Amero, a full-patch Hells Angel, was
arrested in Montreal in November 2012 as an alleged leader of an
international drug ring that worked with Mexican cartels to import and
distribute about 75 kilograms of cocaine per week. He is awaiting trial.

The exact number of cartel agents in the Lower Mainland is hard to
pinpoint - they often cross the border illegally and are deliberately
low-key, said Porteous, the officer in charge of Vancouver Police
investigative services.

"They are not as identifiable - they are not driving around
steroided-up =C2=85 They are pretty business-like. They fly under the
radar," he said. "The people that they have here are actually very
influential. And they come and go of course. But the people they have
here are the people who can get stuff done."

He estimates the high-level cartel reps in the region at somewhere
between 12 and 25.

"I would say bosses - a dozen, a couple of dozen - but then they have
all their little tentacles," he said. "Even if you have six or 10 or
12, then they are going to reach out to all of the other existing
gangsters that they partner with and then that becomes their group."

The RCMP's internal newsletter, The Gazette, published an article last
year noting the increasing numbers of cartel members in Canada.

"More recently, there's been evidence of a definite cartel presence in
Canada, specifically Mexican cartels. The roles of those individuals
within Canada are very much those of gatekeepers, involved in the
importation and distribution of cocaine, as well as logistics and
money laundering/currency movement," the article said.

Asked for more information about cartel members who've moved to Canada,
RCMP Sgt. Greg Cox told the Sun: "While there are people in Canada
working for Mexican organized crime groups, for operational reasons, we
aren't in a position to provide any additional details on this."

He said RCMP intelligence has "established that Mexican cartel
influence has increasingly affected criminal markets in Canada."

"Consequently, criminal activity in Canada linked to Mexican cartels
has become a national priority for the RCMP," Cox said.

The Vancouver Sun found major Vancouver cartel links in several U.S.
prosecutions of Mexicans in the Sinaloa and La Familia gangs.

More than $8 million owned by the Mexican gangs was laundered in
Canada in one investigation. Most of that - almost $7 million - was
delivered to a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent working
undercover with Vancouver Police.

Three Mexicans living in Canada and a Vancouver man were arrested in
the case and deported to the U.S. All have since pleaded guilty.

One of the men - Vancouver's Ariel Julian Savein - will be sentenced
in January 2015 for laundering $811,850 of La Familia's drug profits.

When B.C. gangsters James Riach, Barry Espadilla and Ali Shirazi were
arrested in Manila last January for allegedly operating a major
synthetic drug network, police there said the Canadians were working
on behalf of a Mexican cartel.

The RCMP later passed intelligence to the Filipino National Bureau of
Investigation about a purported cartel plot to kill Riach.

Trials for the three Canadians are currently underway and expected to
last into 2015.

The cartel links continue to be investigated by authorities in Manila,
one source said this month.

Several Mexicans have been arrested in Canadian drug investigations in
recent years.

In September, Niagara Regional Police announced Jamie Ortiz of Mexico
City was among 14 arrested in a massive cocaine smuggling operation
involving cartels and Canadian organized crime.

In Kelowna in August, Salvador Ascencio-Chavez was sentenced to 13
years for smuggling 97 kilograms of cocaine into Canada in September
2010 with two B.C. men. At the time, Ascencio-Chavez was living in
B.C. illegally after having been deported following an earlier cocaine
importation conviction.

Last May, 19-year-old Mexican Andy Garcia Macias was sentenced to six
years after smuggling nine kilos of cocaine across the border in
January east of Osoyoos Lake.

"Information from various investigations indicates that the cartels
importing drugs into Canada continue to seek new smuggling methods,"
the RCMP's Cox said.

"Drugs have been seized from shipping containers, private boats, and
commercial planes that have originated out of, or travelled via,
Mexico and/or South America. Commercial and private vehicles are also
used to smuggle drugs believed to have originated in Mexico into
Canada via the U.S.A.," he said.

Victor Manjarrez, a professor at the University of Texas at El Paso,
isn't surprised by the cartels' move into Canada.

"When you talk about the Sinaloa gang and the others - people often
forget that these cartels are businesses," he said.

Increased American enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border has
impacted the cartels' ability to make money, said Manjarrez, an expert
on border management and security and a former law enforcement officer.

"If you are a Mexican drug lord - a cartel member - and you are
looking at this and saying, geez you know in the last 10 years the
United States government has doubled the size of the agency
responsible for enforcing them =C2=85 The cost of doing business is going

up all the time. So what do you do? You circumvent that and you look
for new markets."

The volume of commercial and vehicle traffic back and forth over the
49th parallel creates what Manjarrez calls "border clutter."

"The criminal element definitely tries to exploit that. What you are
seeing though in places like Vancouver and other places in Canada, you
are starting to see recognition by cartels that there are other
markets beyond the United States."

He said the cartel contacts in Canada would be "trusted up and
comers."

"It's either a family member or a family friend - someone they trust
with that franchise. It helps if they're able to get legal entry document
s."

Sylvia Longmire, a drug analyst and author of Cartel: The Coming
Invasion of Mexico's Drug Wars, said the cartels partner with local
gangs if they see a good business opportunity.

"They just find whatever the lucrative drug market is and where the
demand is and then they partner up with the local gangs on the
street," she said in an phone interview from Tucson, Arizona.

"You are going to have that I-5 corridor that makes transport back and
forth pretty easy."

Despite the arrest in Mexico last February of Sinaloa leader Joaquin
(El Chapo) Guzman, the powerful cartel is still going strong, Longmire
said.

"They have succession plans in place for quite some time because this
is the life. They know that anybody can get caught or killed at any
moment."

Porteous said Vancouver Police and their law enforcement partners in
the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency and in the U.S. have
gathered a lot of intelligence on the cartels' presence in Canada.

"We are well aware of it and it is a priority for us," he said. "We
actually know a lot about this. This is a big deal so we work hand in
glove with the U.S. authorities and with the RCMP on this."

Vancouverites should not fear the onslaught of Mexican-style cartel
violence, because the people who've come here don't want trouble,
Porteous said.

"If people read 'Oh my God, the Sinaloa cartel is here, La Familia
Michoacana is here,' then think all of a sudden we are going to have
bandoleros and guys with AK-47s in the streets. That's not what it is
here."

The cartels pose little threat of violence in this country, but the
drugs they bring in do lead to deadly confrontations between B.C.-bred
gangs who fight over control of the market, Porteous said.

"I would prefer not to see the drugs come into town at all because
once they come in, that perpetuates violence," he said.

"We want to pick it off south of the border or in a different country
or wherever - because once it comes into Vancouver, then there are
issues."

He said the two main cartels with representatives here are Sinaloa and
La Familia, though police have also seen people from Los Zetas,
notorious for its extreme violence, including torture and beheadings.

The cartel representatives are willing to work with any
low-to-mid-level crime group in B.C. including gangs like the Hells
Angels, the Independent Soldiers and "Middle-Eastern organized crime,"
Porteous said.

And while much of the cocaine and methamphetamine they bring in to
B.C. is for local distribution, Porteous believes a lot of it is also
destined for Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

"Vancouver is an international hub for distribution to Southeast Asia
and other countries across the water, where as you know the prices are
significantly higher," he said.

Law enforcement agencies are using whatever means they can to deal
with the cartels in Canada, Porteous said. If they're here on expired
visitor visas, the CBSA will target them. If police in any
jurisdiction can build cases against them, they'll be prosecuted, he
said.

And police will go after the drug trade profits.

"You have to remember that it is a two-way street. If you are bringing
in hundreds and hundreds of kilos of illegal drugs - cocaine,
methamphetamine or heroin - into Vancouver and you are generating
profit from those sales, then you have to try and move the money out,
which is an issue," Porteous said.

"The biggest thing for us is to disrupt [the cartels] because in my
experience as a police officer, criminals will go to an area where
it's easiest for them to work," Porteous said. "But if it's
disruptions through prosecutions in Canada, prosecutions in the United
States, deportations, seizures, our goal is to make it an unpleasant
environment for them, to make them go and do their business out of a
different city."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Matt