How Communist China drives drugs, violence and inflated housing prices in Canada
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Summary
Sam Cooper, author of the new book, Willful blindness, explains how a network of narcos, tycoons, and Chinese Communist Party agents infiltrated the west, including organized crime, triads, and so much more.
Transcript
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Hey everyone, our guest today is Sam Cooper, author of a fantastic new book that you've
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got to read, Willful Blindness, How a Network of Narcos, Tycoons, and CCP Agents Infiltrated
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And this book is, I got to tell you folks, this is such an eye-opener.
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Maybe you've had some questions about organized crime in Canada, about immigration fraud,
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Are they 100% above board, or is there some of the stuff you hear about or see in the
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Is there some connection with fentanyl, drug dealing, and so forth?
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Maybe some politicians roped into it a bit here and there, elected officials.
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This book, Willful Blindness, it'll blow your mind.
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You've got to read this, and I'm really pleased to welcome Sam Cooper to the program, a post-media
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This is, again, I'm trying not to gush here, but this book was just such an eye-opener,
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And I'm someone who tries to follow this file as much as it is.
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Also, what's interesting is, yes, they're revelations, but they also go back decades.
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And the way I've told the book, I think I try to explain to the reader, it was an incredible
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reporting journey for myself, that I really started as a young reporter in a journalism
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school in Vancouver, had my mind blown by the downtown east side.
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And just, I couldn't understand, first of all, the level of heroin overdose deaths.
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I couldn't understand visually the open-air drug market beyond belief in Canada.
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So just as a young reporter, I knew there was something there.
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People did reports on this situation from time to time, but it never changed, and it
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And one thing that your book shows so interestingly, Sam, is when you bring that up, you know,
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downtown east side, and we're all familiar with those tragic scenes of people who are really
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down and out and really suffering there on the streets of downtown Vancouver.
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We talk about it in that regard, that, okay, we have a drug problem, a problem on our streets
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But when we talk about the casinos, when we talk about immigration fraud, when we talk
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about organized crime from abroad, your book shows this is all very much connected.
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I will say that my book has taken a step that others haven't in finding those connections
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And let me just start by saying, I followed the trail from sort of the downtown east side
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to shock over real estate prices in Vancouver and trying to understand what role offshore
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And I eventually sort of stumbled onto this casino money laundering story.
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And your listeners probably have heard a little bit about it, but it bears repeating.
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What I uncovered was that these whale gamblers exclusively being flown in from mainland China were
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literally carrying in hockey bags of Canadian $20 bills from $100,000 wrapped consistent to
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drug proceeds up to $1.2 million is the largest ever single transaction.
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So I exposed what's called the Vancouver model of money laundering.
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Really, it's the Macau model of money laundering.
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And what this is, is ultra wealthy people from China need to get or want to get their corruption
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So they use drug traffickers in Canada who are casino loan sharks.
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Really, the drug traffickers and the casino loan sharks are one in the same.
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And in many cases, the whale gamblers, drug traffickers and loan sharks, they're criminal bosses.
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So they make a deal to meet someone in a parking lot in outside River Rock Casino in Richmond,
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you know, get up to $500,000 to a million dollars in cash.
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And the casinos were letting them launder this money into chips.
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It gets a lot more complicated in terms of the paths that the money follows.
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But the real clincher here is that these industrialists, gangsters, just wealthy people from China would
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take out that drug cash loan in Richmond, pay it back in China where their source of wealth is
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So if you can see the loop that this is facilitating production of fentanyl precursors in China,
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it's facilitating the shipment of the drugs into Vancouver, the money is, the drugs are sold,
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the cash is laundered in casinos and real estate, and it's paid back in China.
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So I made the connections through my investigative reporting that this incredible underground banking
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It was driving the opioid death totals across Canada.
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And really, I proved that Vancouver is now a hub for these transnational gangs based in China
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and producing fentanyl pills in Canada, shipping them around the world.
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And the last level is I tracked back in time and found that there was strong, strong connections
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between the transnational drug gangs, tycoons from China, and the Chinese Communist Party.
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So at the highest level, this is geopolitics and very much, you know, it's not just about
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money laundering, intelligence operations, economic infiltration to benefit the Chinese
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Communist Party is all wrapped up in this scheme that has really, the rot has become very deep
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in certain municipalities in Vancouver and Toronto too.
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And it's amazing this is not discussed more and really broken down more than it has been,
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because I'm sure a lot of people would listen in and go, oh, yeah, I've been watching some
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of those Pablo Escobar things on Netflix and reading the stories is kind of like a small
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But based on what you write in the book, and about how big this gets in Hong Kong and Macau
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No, no, this is not a small time version of Pablo Escobar.
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And I, everyone that reads the book has to make that that's exactly it.
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I argue that as Canadians, we, it's very hard for us to get our head around the fact that
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transnational gangs in Asia are the biggest, most powerful in the world.
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In fact, they have subordinated Latin American and Mexican cartels, because they, underground
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banking, this cycle I'm talking about, that's, let's just name the cities, Macau, Hong Kong,
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Shenzhen, Wuhan, Vancouver, Toronto, Melbourne would be very strong notes.
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But in the Western world, Vancouver, probably the biggest.
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And really, Markham, in a very concentrated way, is starting to compete.
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And the data point here is that Shilop Say, some of your listeners will recognize the name.
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He's this alleged narco kingpin of a super cartel called the Company.
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He was just, he's under an extradition order to Australia.
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But he and his lieutenants, 25% of this super cartel's leadership is based in Vancouver and
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And so my book showed this and explained that, as you said, for Canadians, we need to realize
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transnational, the most powerful and prolific gangs in the world are being run out of Canada.
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But the key here is they are politically protected.
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Not only that, they are politically connected in mainland China, and involved also in, you
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know, objectives for the Chinese Communist Party.
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You know, Sam, there's one really fascinating paragraph in one of the chapters in the book
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where you're talking about warfare that's taking place in the streets of Macau, people
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gunning each other down, various different gangs fighting, a nurse dying in the crossfire
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And then you go on to say that one of these gang leaders, he was ready for battle, but
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10,000 kilometers from the war zone, living with his wife and young children in the East
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Vancouver home that he had bought in 1994 for $500,000.
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And in November 1996, armed with just his cell phone, he called in his orders.
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So we actually have kingpins who are running the show, running gang warfare comfortably
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And as I just said, this Chai Lopse figure, people are surprised with reports in Reuters that,
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you know, this kingpin is a Canadian citizen that arrived in 1988 as a big circle boy in
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Toronto, my book shows that big circle boys arrived in from 86 to 88 to 90 across Canada,
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but especially in Toronto and Vancouver, and the big circle boys were involved.
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They were the ones that were charged or contracted by a Hong Kong Macau triad to execute this rival
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In suburbs, you know, in sometimes in very nondescript homes, sometimes in what I call
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sprawling, massive Italian mansions in the modern era that run illegal casinos, these
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are gang bosses that are calling shots around the world.
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And the most interesting thing that I found in that chapter, again, that both corroborated
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what I was hearing and reading, you know, in very sort of legendary Canadian intelligence
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reports and from legendary, well, let's just say credible sources, this case proved what
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That is, police were allowed, because of certain circumstances, they tapped the phone of this
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They tapped the phone of the people trying to kill him in Vancouver.
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They tapped the phones of highest level triad bosses in Hong Kong and Macau.
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And as the gang war raged in Macau, they were surprised to hear that a high level Chinese
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official got on the line with this Vancouver gang boss.
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And essentially, the phone taps say, this Mr. Kwok, we don't know his first name, started
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to mediate and said, OK, the Chinese state now, the gang war has to end.
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You need to start talking to this rival triad boss.
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In fact, we've installed a new boss who is not so brash and does not want to kill you.
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And funnily enough, Macau casino boss, Stanley Ho, his name came up in the phone taps as well,
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So this all revolved around Macau casinos, their connections to high levels of the Chinese
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state and the triads warring for control of them.
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The Chinese state is interrelating and at the highest levels can direct these transnational
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Let's go back to something you just said at the beginning of those couple of minutes there,
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Sam, because you said, according to police documents, according to police reports, because
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someone may hear what we're saying, go, where's Sam getting all of this from?
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And it's like, well, you're getting it from actual documentation that you've seen that
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has been shared with you from law enforcement, security sources, things that are documented
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that are sitting on the desks of various police forces across Canada and in senior offices
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I mean, people say, why aren't we hearing about this more?
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Well, OK, that's a question maybe we'll talk about in a few minutes.
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But this is something that is fully documented by Canadian law enforcement.
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And just to put a name to these legendary reports I'm talking about, the Sidewinder report
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This was a report by CSIS and the RCMP that laid out the facts and evidence that the Chinese
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Communist Party had made a compact with these Hong Kong tycoons who, in some cases, are triad
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bosses or dragon heads, in some cases, do business with triads.
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And a compact was made that the party and gangs will work together financially and in order
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to sort of prepare for the takeover of Hong Kong.
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This CSIS report said many of these high-level gangsters and tycoons have successfully immigrated
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They have stick-handled, if you will, around red flags in immigration files.
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And they have economically infiltrated at the highest levels of real estate, Vancouver and Toronto.
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And actually, from a large quarter of the political establishment in Ottawa, the report was scorned.
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But what the records I have found in the modern era and also in federal court files, what I
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just told you about this Mr. Kwok, a Chinese official directing a gang boss in Vancouver,
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So there is both public source record, there are leaked intelligence reports, there are leaked
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And matching intelligence that I get from high-level sources that really, the way I found, the
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way I got such detail and deep reporting on in this book is that there are a number of
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people in various Canadian government agencies that believe Canadians need to know this stuff.
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And as hard as it is to believe, it was hard to believe for me until I saw so much corroboration
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But here's the thing that I'm really left asking here.
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And I know we're going to probably talk about some immigration fraud components as well
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Normally, Canadians get to know these things because, well, if you got all these shenanigans
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going on, you're going to have criminal charges, they're going to happen in an open court,
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and then court reporters are going to tell you what happened.
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And there comes the paper trail and the public documentation.
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But we've seen very little of that, despite the fact that these documents you're talking
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To answer your question, I'll draw on just a couple modern examples.
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We know very well what's going on, the controversy around the Winnipeg lab right now.
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A scientist from China was working with People's Liberation Army researchers.
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CSIS had warned Canada's government this should not be happening.
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All kinds of dangerous material was sent to this Wuhan lab in 2019 that is now the focus
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of deeper investigations into whatever happened in that lab.
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Could it be related to the coronavirus pandemic?
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We are not hearing anything about the RCMP investigation.
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Clearly, the government at some level is afraid of what is in the RCMP and CSIS reports in
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And I don't think that, based on my knowledge, I really don't think criminal charges will
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come forward in that case, even if it was the highest level espionage, because the government
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Another case I report in my book is Cameron Ortis, the former RCMP highest level intelligence
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official, there's a publication ban on his court case, the level of potential infiltration,
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potentially giving protection to the highest level money launderers and gangsters in the
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It's very clear that Canada's justice powers that be do not want details to come out.
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This could be very damaging with our National Security Alliance partners, the United States,
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So those are just a few examples of why these details don't come out.
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The other factor is, Canada, why can we not convict transnational narco bosses?
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Why did Australia seek to extradite Shilopse in the Netherlands when he was bound to fly to Canada?
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Why did they go to the Netherlands instead of letting him land in his home base of Toronto?
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Because they know that the legal system in the Netherlands is much more conducive to work
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with allies like the United States and Australia to bring people to account.
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But what my sources would say, this would be experienced prosecutors, experienced police
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There's no such thing as a money laundering or drug trafficking case where charter of rights
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And it's very difficult in Canada's legal system to get prosecutions and even to work
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with allies who give Canada amazing facts and intelligence on who to target.
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For example, I write in the afterword of my book how Mexican cartels had such a strong base
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And they were using the Chinese triad underground banks to launder their money.
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But the RCMP couldn't be a player while the DEA and Australian police have all this information
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You referred to when, you know, why aren't we getting more action on this?
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And I'm sure various, you know, people in political discourse will say, oh, well, you know,
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He admires the basic dictatorship, et cetera, et cetera.
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And, you know, there's obviously a lot of truth to all of that.
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But like, come on, this is a person who's been prime minister since 2015.
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And what you were talking about is a problem that seems to have really locked in many years
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Is this a sort of systemic issue in law enforcement, in the justice system?
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It's a systemic legal issue in that, for example, New York City, the FBI was able to
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break the hold of the Italian mafia who had gripped large portions, some would say even
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They only broke that grip with racketeering laws, which allow police to, you know, convict
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cases based on patterns and evidence and to get wiretaps.
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In Canada, you know, there are very limited sort of organized crime prosecution laws.
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But I know at a high level, Bill Blair, the Minister of Public Safety, has been asked, based
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on the egregious transnational crime infiltration in B.C., he has been asked directly, will you
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And the answer is, let's just, you know, put it this way, crickets, they're not moving
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Some people tell me that this is the Charter of Rights, you know, an inhibition to deeper
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Is something that is such an excellent legal framework for honest Canadians, has it become
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a block against transnational criminals that are setting up in Canada?
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Because they're not even getting to the, you know, it's not like their defense counsel
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even has the opportunity to stand up on the first day and make that argument.
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It's like there's no willpower to even get to that point and force the issue.
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So prosecutors that are involved in the highest level cases that I talk about in my book, these
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would be transnational gang bosses, everyone knows that they're responsible for, they're
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most responsible for the highest level of fentanyl deaths in the world.
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They can't be prosecuted in Canada because evidence disclosure requirements are so stringent
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The ability to get wiretaps is so difficult in Canada that many of these cases never get
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Many of these cases fall apart due to errors made with, you know, such voluminous disclosure
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I'm told that defense lawyers are a little bit upset that they really don't get long trials.
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Maybe that's, I'm not trying to make light of it.
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People have told me that the scales have been legally shifted so far towards, you know, organized
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That's why we're getting this problem that is only now becoming recognized.
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And at the end of the day, it is political will.
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And actually, you might have to slay a few sacred cows legally to realize that some reforms
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need to be taken because fentanyl deaths are, you know, this is like a warlike death total.
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Real estate prices juiced by, like, you know, billions, billions, uncountable billions of
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Let me just, there was a fentanyl super lab busted in a Vancouver neighborhood three weeks
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The RCMP said it could produce 13 million fatal doses per week.
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That's based on the raw precursors they found in this super lab that converts to something
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like a billion, perhaps even two billion in profits on the street per month to whatever
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So what I'm saying here is that the scales of justice are not being served by the damages
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It will take strong political will to have a fix for that.
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Well, let's talk about some of the political will that perhaps heads in the other direction.
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Some amazing things in here about politicians who are involved, compromised.
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One story that you tell, it is quite something.
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A municipal politician in British Columbia, a municipal councillor in Burnaby, BC, who was
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He would loiter around the VIP salon holding a man's purse.
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Obviously, in the sanitized corporate language of the BC Lottery Corporation, a banned lender or
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a cash facilitator, someone who could reasonably be suspected to be laundering criminal proceeds
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Oh, yeah, he leaves the casino in a black Porsche Carrera, even though you know that his salary
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was $60,000 a year as a councillor at that time.
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This is an elected official in British Columbia.
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And as I write, also a person who can vote on upzoning applications made by, and I know this
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by the very same whale gamblers that he would have been loan sharking, that is, lending out
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drug dealer cash to so that they could buy in, as they say, for maybe $500,000 in casino
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So this is the highest level corruption you can imagine.
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It's clear that a transnational gang got a hold of this one politician, and my book shows
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He would be, in criminal law enforcement terms, his hands are the most dirty because they have
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They have him connected in secret files to various, very elite drug kingpins.
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Redacted documents don't allow us to read some of the facts.
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But this is just, you know, what appears to be the dirtiest of the dirty.
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But there's a whole network of politicians in British Columbia surrounding the casino business.
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My book points to a few that, you know, their transactions might not be so direct as this
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politician, but they could be lawyers, they could be counsellors that are doing the bidding
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of the Chinese Communist Party through various community groups.
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And also, again, my intelligence sources point to very specific documents that won't be released
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in Freedom of Information that point to deep penetration of transnational organized crime
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When you, I, in my book, I point to whale gamblers that were gambling tens of millions per
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year, very connected to China's military and state, very connected to weapons, people below
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them on, on the record, I can read the records, people below them in hierarchy charts that I
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obtained from the RCMP directly accused of being fentanyl precursor importers.
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And yet none of this was stopped until my reporting brought it to light.
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So Sam, when we hear that we need to deal with what's going on with the Chinese Communist
00:24:47.860
Party right now and their overtures around the world, we did a great episode the other
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week with Josh Rogan from The Washington Post on his new book.
00:24:54.100
When we read about that, when we read about, say, at the G7 recently, Joe Biden trying to
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pressure other G7 leaders to get on board in the efforts to contain China, hopefully try
00:25:05.540
Do you think they're just talking about Belt and Road Initiative matters and the killing of
00:25:12.040
the Uyghurs in those concentration camps and all of those bigger geopolitical issues?
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Or do you think that this is also going on here?
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Is this something that's being talked about by world leaders?
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And is this part of the things they want to tackle?
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Or do you think that this is a see no evil, hear no evil thing?
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We already know this is a bipartisan move in the United States.
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Government officials across the board have filed really briefs saying that,
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Canada, where are you, are you with us on your position on China's interference, on China's
00:25:48.660
And specifically, Canada, are you with us on Chinese transnational crime threats?
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Remember, my book shows, and on deep reporting, China is the greatest threat through interference,
00:26:01.320
threats to North American sovereignty, intelligence.
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But also, Chinese transnational crime is the biggest public safety threat in Canada.
00:26:14.200
And what my book shows is it all rolls together.
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You can't separate the transnational crime, the fentanyl.
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Why can China not stop it when they have full control of those factories?
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This all rolls into, as my book argues, sort of intelligence operations and interference
00:26:34.180
operations, where I have quotes from David Mulroney, former ambassador, who said, I wanted
00:26:41.220
to test, you know, this unbelievable theory that intelligence reports say, can the Communist
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Party, is it really using gangsters to infiltrate other societies?
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Mr. Mulroney said, there's no denying it, in diaspora communities, the party will use any
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tool, and one of its best tools is co-opting criminal networks so that it can try to control
00:27:09.240
There's intimidation, surveillance, there's violence, and this is, it all rolls into something
00:27:16.060
This is China's strategy to use industrial tycoons, tech companies, military operatives,
00:27:23.800
and gangsters to sort of spread and achieve their objectives abroad.
00:27:29.300
Sam, one of the things that I find so, so powerful about what's going on here is that
00:27:32.880
some of the people who are speaking out the loudest and the most urgently about this are
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Asian Canadians themselves, people who have come to Canada because they want to be here
00:27:41.960
They want to get away from that stuff because they are the ones who are seeing what's going
00:27:47.480
I've had emails from people who are in the area saying, hey, you know, you've got to
00:27:51.400
watch what's going on here, really trying to blow the whistle and all of this.
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I was speaking a couple of years ago to a, I won't identify the person because it was kind
00:27:58.600
of a private conversation, but an Asian lady who's a fairly prominent politician in Canada,
00:28:04.100
and I was just asking her, oh, what do you think about all the stuff with China in the
00:28:07.260
And I was surprised at the very aggressive response.
00:28:09.900
She said she pretty much wants every single barge that shows up at the Vancouver port,
00:28:15.000
you know, open to check for fentanyl right away.
00:28:17.380
And if you see any, any fentanyl in there, you instantly charge everybody on the boat with
00:28:22.040
And I was like, whoa, you know, this lady's hardcore in all of this.
00:28:25.340
And I wasn't expecting that answer, but I think it underscores how I think Asian persons
00:28:28.940
in Canada are actually some of the people most passionate about saying, come on guys, we got
00:28:37.660
A number of those people would be sources in my book that they speak of a real fear in
00:28:44.360
the communities, especially in Toronto and Vancouver, where the vast majority of people
00:28:51.520
Some, you know, have been multi-generational families, some more recent immigrants, but they
00:28:59.640
But there is a battle going on in Canadian cities between lovers of freedom and democracy
00:29:07.920
and a smaller, I believe, but very wealthy and powerful and well-funded and supported
00:29:16.920
by the Chinese Communist Party contingent that is very pro-Beijing, that is very involved in
00:29:22.420
essentially foreign interference for many reasons.
00:29:27.420
I'm sure you have come across in your reporting people in Toronto that are, they want to speak
00:29:34.260
about their family members in Hong Kong, their fears for that society, their sorrow for what's
00:29:39.820
going on in Hong Kong, but they're also afraid to show their face or use their name.
00:29:44.820
And for good reason, gangs are being used in Hong Kong to intimidate democracy protesters.
00:29:50.700
And the same thing is happening in Vancouver and Toronto.
00:29:56.020
I'll just raise the one powerful anecdote that I would say, people ask you, what are those
00:30:00.740
aha or motivational moments that really drove you to overcome whatever hurdles and write
00:30:08.220
And a number of Hong Kong Canadians were in a Vancouver church the fall of 2019.
00:30:14.280
You'll remember all these democracy and counter-democracy protests going on in Vancouver and Toronto.
00:30:23.180
They were surrounded by about 100 extremely aggressive pro-Beijing nationalists waving large
00:30:31.460
They had to be escorted to safety by Vancouver police.
00:30:36.880
People were running up close to get photos of their face.
00:30:40.260
This, to them, and they've testified about this now, they've been on Parliament Hill in these
00:30:47.860
They believe their identities were captured for intelligence reasons.
00:30:51.380
This can be used as threats against family members in mainland China or Hong Kong.
00:30:55.780
And my reporting showed that some of those people in the crowd were very connected to both the
00:31:01.160
Chinese state at a good high level and also those organized crime suspects that I uncovered in
00:31:09.140
These would be people with military and allegedly intelligence connections.
00:31:14.480
So that's, you can, let's just use some, some bald language.
00:31:18.260
That's sort of an evil nexus that, that is operating in Vancouver and Toronto.
00:31:24.480
One of the things that's most interesting is you talk about back in the 1980s, a meeting
00:31:29.280
that Deng Xiaopeng, who was the paramount leader of China at the time, had with two individuals
00:31:33.760
who would later go on to play a prominent role in what's going on on Canadian soil and all of what
00:31:40.340
And I found it so interesting because, I mean, China watchers who want to see China be a more
00:31:44.700
liberal country would generally consider Deng Xiaopeng, out of all the leaders, to be a bit
00:31:50.280
I mean, Mao is a very hard line, and now Xi Jinping is described as pretty much the most
00:31:55.980
But Deng Xiaopeng, he's the guy who liberalizes and so forth.
00:31:58.720
But you've said, well, Deng Xiaopeng actually met with these criminal enterprise leaders.
00:32:03.800
And as you were saying earlier, Sam, they put together basically a deal to kind of broker
00:32:08.300
peace between them and cooperation and to allow them to go on and do their thing.
00:32:12.480
And then those very people who were in that meeting with Deng Xiaopeng, they were pulling
00:32:17.620
some of the levers of what was going on here in Canada, here in Vancouver.
00:32:22.560
And the point on Deng Xiaopeng is, look, the people that really get the party in Beijing
00:32:32.520
Some leaders may appear to be, you know, the iron-fisted.
00:32:37.620
Some may be more palatable to Western sensibilities.
00:32:42.140
But they're going in the direction of wanting to dominate and become a global power.
00:32:50.600
So, yes, this is one of those examples in my book where I had seen things in Vancouver
00:32:58.360
That is, these connections between Chinese military figures and known, the roughest gangsters
00:33:08.240
And I thought this lines up perfectly with the CSIS report that says high-level Chinese state
00:33:14.600
actors are working with organized crime and in foreign lands.
00:33:18.280
And indeed, the intelligence about Deng Xiaoping meeting with the highest-level Hong Kong tycoons
00:33:25.280
is about that compact where the party says to the tycoons, who are very connected to heroin
00:33:32.960
trafficking gangs, we'll work with you in Hong Kong if you work with us in Beijing.
00:33:38.780
And again, the Macau casino tycoons, as my book quotes a Canadian official that was there in
00:33:44.600
the 1990s in Hong Kong, the Macau casino tycoon owners are connected to Chinese intelligence
00:33:53.640
And again, they're connected to drug trafficking gangs and their major Canadian real estate
00:34:00.200
This is what occurred through immigration fraud.
00:34:03.080
And that's according to the allegations that I make the argument in the book.
00:34:09.980
There are former CSIS, former immigration officials, former RCMP that have been sort of
00:34:16.340
sitting on their, you know, zipping their lip for decades.
00:34:19.460
And they really believe this should be a national inquiry at this point to see how high that
00:34:24.540
corruption went in the Hong Kong, Canada's Hong Kong Commission.
00:34:29.360
Well, you know, it's really interesting because when you hear all these anecdotes about things
00:34:33.120
going on or that person who was basically running Macau Street Wars from his cell phone in his
00:34:37.940
home in Vancouver, you go, how are these guys even here?
00:34:41.800
As you write in the book, Sam, you say most Canadians want their government to have humanitarian
00:34:47.040
So we have various programs where we are, I think, quite rightfully sympathetic and open
00:34:51.660
to bringing in people for humanitarian reasons, refugees, of course.
00:34:54.860
And, you know, you pull on that and Canadians are very much in support of all of that.
00:34:59.040
But you write, but the flip side of a porous immigration vetting system is a society in which Asian
00:35:03.720
women are forced into selling their bodies in underground casinos and body houses in big
00:35:09.920
They are victims paying extortionate debts to loan sharks.
00:35:13.040
And Toronto and Vancouver are the hubs of this human trafficking used to supply gangs in
00:35:18.940
So, Sam, the way you write about some of these various humanitarian ways to get immigration here
00:35:25.900
in Canada or the Immigration Investor Program is that there's a lot of exploitation going on.
00:35:30.460
I mean, we're doing a lot to bring good people here to Canada who are coming for the right
00:35:34.600
reasons and being honest in their applications.
00:35:36.300
But we've also got a lot of cases slipping through the cracks.
00:35:41.900
For this story, I worked with a colleague who's very, very involved in immigration files.
00:35:49.400
And my framework is exactly, you know, you read the passage that we have the best humanitarian
00:35:55.440
framework, a country of immigrants, a multicultural society.
00:36:00.400
What we haven't been good at, and I believe the reasons are greed and willful blindness,
00:36:05.540
is that people at high levels have not responded to warnings about vetting some of the most powerful
00:36:14.780
predators in the world who are predators where they come from, are allowed to exploit Canada's
00:36:21.360
system, in some ways, in corruption, and in some ways just to the systemic failures.
00:36:28.820
Canada has been horrifically bad at vetting out some very dangerous people.
00:36:34.420
And that's really the book, the thesis of the book is that what I saw, you know, as a reporter
00:36:40.700
getting my legs in Vancouver year after year, learning more, having my mind blown,
00:36:45.840
I then became somewhat of a historic investigator and went back to these cases in Hong Kong and
00:36:52.720
realized the game was already lost in the early 1990s.
00:36:57.260
And that the most powerful people, we're not talking about people that are laundering casino
00:37:01.180
chips or buying a condo here and there with fentanyl proceeds.
00:37:05.300
We're talking about people that were connected to the Chinese state and buying huge swaths of
00:37:13.680
Those were people that were flagged for being some of the most dangerous criminals in the
00:37:20.620
Some were rejected, but a majority, a very significant majority, did exploit both through
00:37:27.600
corruption and through immigration investor systems that have shown to be basically frauds,
00:37:37.000
They're both out of existence now because they were proven to be so problematic.
00:37:40.980
You know, I remember reading a news story about immigration and refugees from another part
00:37:45.840
of the world, not from China and Macau and those areas, and it talked about a lady who
00:37:52.340
She had been sexually assaulted, sexually abused.
00:37:54.900
Back in another country, she received refugee status here in Canada, and she was walking on
00:38:04.440
That person was also able to unscrupulously, to scrupulously, pardon me, lie in his application,
00:38:11.460
So you had the abused getting status here in Canada as a refugee, as she should have, and
00:38:16.320
then the other person, the abuser, gets into Canada by abusing the system.
00:38:21.440
Are we seeing things like that happen in the files you're talking about?
00:38:24.100
You know, people are trying to escape all of this madness that's going on, and yet some
00:38:28.940
of these villains are also the people slipping in.
00:38:35.400
There are intelligence operatives that have claimed to be refugees, and the Canadian system
00:38:43.980
was so blind in some ways that they didn't ask.
00:38:47.920
You say you're a refugee, but you imported, you know, perhaps a few million dollars to your
00:38:55.880
If you're a refugee, how are you also a millionaire?
00:39:00.020
And within weeks or months, this same person would be cited by Vancouver police as a member
00:39:08.320
of the Big Circle Boys, investigated constantly, put up on prosecutions on drug charges, loan
00:39:16.820
sharking, extortion charges from year to year, but never convicted.
00:39:25.920
And it just shows that both the vetting is letting down the victims of that loan shark.
00:39:32.800
Again, let me stress that one of the, I won't name the person now, it probably won't mean
00:39:37.560
anything to anyone, but a very powerful gangster on Canada's West Coast would come before a judge
00:39:43.920
and be accused of cleaning out all the furniture of a woman's house and checks from all other loan shark victims found in a warehouse, weapons, raw opium.
00:39:56.220
And this isn't enough to get this person who was already facing deportation in sort of the quick line where, okay, let's get this case cleared and deportation.
00:40:08.080
He's still doing business, allegedly, as a high-level gang boss and loan shark in this very Richmond River Rock Casino.
00:40:16.080
In my book, we point to a case in 2014 where a million-dollar transaction occurs and this person facilitating, allegedly, from a Range Rover in the parking lot.
00:40:28.260
So your question was, do I know of these cases?
00:40:31.420
I know of cases of predators that are victimizing Canadians.
00:40:35.160
They're victimizing especially Chinese Canadians, is what the record shows, violent home invasions, and yet nothing was done to stop it.
00:40:44.860
The Canadian justice system seemed just weak, ineffectual, and I believe in some cases corruption had to have come into it.
00:40:53.600
And Sam, what I also find interesting about your book is that there was actually a lot of attempts to stop it by some Canadian officials who were thwarted by others.
00:41:01.360
You write about a 1990s document that was put together from a Hong Kong office, a Canadian office in Hong Kong by law enforcement there, sending it here back to Canada so border officials and others in the immigration system could block the immigration applications from triad bosses, from gangsters, from criminals, and so on.
00:41:18.860
And it was later discovered that there were a number of Canadian officials that actually tore up reports, worked to make sure that they couldn't be distributed properly, that they couldn't get to the right people in CSIS, in foreign affairs, in immigration.
00:41:31.280
And actually a follow-up report concluded that at least one of those people who had played a role in not getting this information sent around went on to become one of Ottawa's most influential advisors, advising prime ministers on foreign affairs, trade, and national security.
00:41:48.860
It's jaw-dropping, and I'll speak around what I can.
00:41:52.060
In that report, I've redacted certain names, but I've also left enough information that the people that wrote those reports of the 1990s still want to see examination of why these warning documents were suppressed according to their evidence.
00:42:09.640
And this network that we're speaking about, that potentially could have been criminally compromised, this points directly back to this Vancouver gang boss who was directed by his boss essentially in the Chinese state to stop this Macau gang war.
00:42:27.340
He's part of that very same network that was blocked in one immigration application through Quebec due to the good work of an immigration officer in Hong Kong.
00:42:39.180
And then he went through the back door in Los Angeles and came into Vancouver.
00:42:44.780
So what I'm saying is there are direct, specific cases, and then there are broad cases where at a high level these warnings are ignored and torn up.
00:42:54.540
And yes, the people that are allegedly behind turning a blind eye continue to rise to powerful positions in Canada's government and foreign affairs.
00:43:04.380
You know, Sam, to bring it all full circle, when we have news stories that say, oh, it's so hard for a millennial to buy a home in Vancouver, oh, we've got a fentanyl crisis on our streets, oh, there's gang warfare, oh, we're concerned about, you know, other questions with Chinese Communist Party and funding research and so forth at Canadian institutions.
00:43:23.560
This all ends up involving some of the same criminal leaders, criminal leaders who we do have files on, that Canadian authorities know about, and that some other Canadian authorities are saying, stand down, don't tackle this issue.
00:43:37.760
And that we have known that all of these problems have been converging and coming together for a number of years now in this country.
00:43:44.280
That's right. Let's talk again about Mr. Chilop, say, allegedly the more prolific, powerful, wealthy, and sophisticated than Pablo Escobar ever was, to my knowledge, still a Canadian citizen.
00:43:58.580
Again, could he not be deported? Could that citizenship not be withdrawn? Could, as my sources say, the man has a real base of operations in Markham, has connections to banking, has family members in Markham that have been of interest to investigations?
00:44:20.460
What is going on in that case? Why is Canada a weak link in international law enforcement that Australian federal police have to travel to Ottawa and say, we're aware that this man is essentially running this cartel absentia through his lieutenants in Markham, and can you do something?
00:44:39.060
And Canada really can't do anything. So at a high level, I would have to put it this way.
00:44:47.000
Some of my sources say, again, I'll point to documents that say some, there are documents that allege deep corruption involving the People's Republic of China into some portions of Canada's political establishment, especially in BC, Ottawa, and Montreal.
00:45:03.500
And it has to be, I'm told that there are records that say some of these transnational gang bosses are involved in corruption.
00:45:10.300
So if they are involved in corruption, and they're also allegedly tied to sort of Chinese military and intelligence objectives at some level, that's just hugely concerning for Canada's future.
00:45:22.840
And we've talked about it, we don't see these cases coming to court. And why is that?
00:45:28.520
All right, speaking of the future, people hear this, people get outraged, they say we have to do something.
00:45:33.140
Let's say we get a new RCMP boss in, a new CSIS director, there's a new prime minister who goes, this is an issue, this is a priority, we got to tackle it, an NGO, an activist group, what have you.
00:45:42.120
Sam, based on everything you know, those people, those groups, those organizations, what should they do as the first step in all this?
00:45:49.780
Because I got to say, it's difficult just to talk about the problem and assess the problem and get it all in your headspace at one moment, let alone, how do we solve it?
00:45:57.940
At a high level, I always like to think of upstream solutions.
00:46:03.200
And what I'm arguing in the book is that this foreign interference is interrelated with the Communist Party using powerful gangs in Canada, attempting to infiltrate society economically through tycoons and gangsters, attempting to influence Canadian officials through gangsters, attempting to intimidate diaspora lovers of democracy.
00:46:29.900
The Hong Kong Canadians, Chinese Canadians that want to be free in Canada, they're under threat and say that the government doesn't have our back.
00:46:39.660
Our National Security Parliamentary Intelligence Committee has filed reports for several years now saying transnational crime and money laundering is a huge and growing concern.
00:46:50.880
In Canada, it's a national security concern, foreign interference from China is a huge concern, they're running covert fox hunt operations in Canada, and Australia, a very similar nation in many ways to Canada, has taken the lead on this global threat with very strong anti-interference laws to tackle their concerns with China.
00:47:15.260
So there's a blueprint sitting in front of the Prime Minister's office and parliament, really, from this committee, saying Australia is an exemplar, they face the same problems, this is probably the worst threat that Canada faces.
00:47:29.700
Of course, Russia and Iran are dangers in Canada in very similar ways, but China is the number one threat, no one disputes that.
00:47:37.520
So there's a blueprint, and why isn't the government acting on it?
00:47:42.300
That would be at the highest level what Canada could do.
00:47:45.800
And then at lower levels, we cascade down to these legal system reforms that we've discussed.
00:47:53.080
There needs to be some sort of alignment with Canada's allies to understand that the modern reality is transnational gangs and militaries and intelligences, services of hostile states are working together to infiltrate the West.
00:48:41.280
Willful Blindness, How a Network of Narcos, Tycoons, and Chinese Communist Party Agents Infiltrated the West.
00:48:48.240
We've really only just begun to scratch the surface.
00:48:50.640
There's so much more in this fantastic book by Sam Cooper.
00:49:05.140
This episode was produced by Andre Pru with theme music by Bryce Hall.
00:49:10.520
You can subscribe to Full Common on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:49:16.460
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