Full Comment - How Communist China drives drugs, violence and inflated housing prices in Canada

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, our guest today is Sam Cooper, author of a fantastic new book that you've

00:00:09.440 got to read, Willful Blindness, How a Network of Narcos, Tycoons, and CCP Agents Infiltrated

00:00:16.100 the West.

00:00:16.500 That's Chinese Communist Party.

00:00:18.480 That's what that stands for.

00:00:19.520 And this book is, I got to tell you folks, this is such an eye-opener.

00:00:23.960 Maybe you've had some questions about organized crime in Canada, about immigration fraud,

00:00:28.880 what's going on in all those casinos?

00:00:30.580 Are they 100% above board, or is there some of the stuff you hear about or see in the

00:00:33.900 movies happening in Vegas?

00:00:35.100 Is that happening up here in Canada?

00:00:37.360 What's with organized crime, triads?

00:00:39.220 Is there some connection with fentanyl, drug dealing, and so forth?

00:00:42.040 A few things maybe not above board.

00:00:43.840 Maybe some politicians roped into it a bit here and there, elected officials.

00:00:47.500 Could it possibly be?

00:00:49.060 Yes, it could possibly be.

00:00:50.680 This book, Willful Blindness, it'll blow your mind.

00:00:53.620 You've got to read this, and I'm really pleased to welcome Sam Cooper to the program, a post-media

00:00:57.400 veteran, now with Global News.

00:00:59.180 Hey, Sam, great to have you here.

00:01:01.440 Thanks so much for having me.

00:01:02.780 This is, again, I'm trying not to gush here, but this book was just such an eye-opener,

00:01:07.560 page after page.

00:01:08.320 And I'm someone who tries to follow this file as much as it is.

00:01:11.340 But there's so many revelations in this book.

00:01:14.440 Also, what's interesting is, yes, they're revelations, but they also go back decades.

00:01:18.520 What a journey you have told.

00:01:19.820 Yeah, it really was a journey.

00:01:23.600 And the way I've told the book, I think I try to explain to the reader, it was an incredible

00:01:29.220 reporting journey for myself, that I really started as a young reporter in a journalism

00:01:34.580 school in Vancouver, had my mind blown by the downtown east side.

00:01:39.600 And just, I couldn't understand, first of all, the level of heroin overdose deaths.

00:01:46.340 I couldn't understand visually the open-air drug market beyond belief in Canada.

00:01:52.060 So just as a young reporter, I knew there was something there.

00:01:56.040 People did reports on this situation from time to time, but it never changed, and it

00:02:00.860 just got worse.

00:02:02.360 And one thing that your book shows so interestingly, Sam, is when you bring that up, you know,

00:02:06.140 downtown east side, and we're all familiar with those tragic scenes of people who are really

00:02:10.860 down and out and really suffering there on the streets of downtown Vancouver.

00:02:13.960 But that is not an isolated situation.

00:02:17.340 We talk about it in that regard, that, okay, we have a drug problem, a problem on our streets

00:02:21.320 and so forth.

00:02:22.020 But when we talk about the casinos, when we talk about immigration fraud, when we talk

00:02:26.880 about organized crime from abroad, your book shows this is all very much connected.

00:02:32.640 You're right.

00:02:33.520 I will say that my book has taken a step that others haven't in finding those connections

00:02:38.920 and seeing the geopolitics behind it.

00:02:41.680 And let me just start by saying, I followed the trail from sort of the downtown east side

00:02:46.940 to shock over real estate prices in Vancouver and trying to understand what role offshore

00:02:52.780 wealth played.

00:02:53.780 And I eventually sort of stumbled onto this casino money laundering story.

00:02:59.000 And your listeners probably have heard a little bit about it, but it bears repeating.

00:03:03.720 What I uncovered was that these whale gamblers exclusively being flown in from mainland China were

00:03:10.500 literally carrying in hockey bags of Canadian $20 bills from $100,000 wrapped consistent to

00:03:17.820 drug proceeds up to $1.2 million is the largest ever single transaction.

00:03:23.720 And this was shockingly common.

00:03:25.480 So I exposed what's called the Vancouver model of money laundering.

00:03:29.260 Really, it's the Macau model of money laundering.

00:03:32.800 And what this is, is ultra wealthy people from China need to get or want to get their corruption 0.95

00:03:39.440 money out of China.

00:03:40.460 So they use drug traffickers in Canada who are casino loan sharks.

00:03:46.240 Really, the drug traffickers and the casino loan sharks are one in the same.

00:03:49.900 And in many cases, the whale gamblers, drug traffickers and loan sharks, they're criminal bosses.

00:03:57.240 So they make a deal to meet someone in a parking lot in outside River Rock Casino in Richmond,

00:04:03.620 you know, get up to $500,000 to a million dollars in cash.

00:04:06.740 And the casinos were letting them launder this money into chips.

00:04:09.960 It gets a lot more complicated in terms of the paths that the money follows.

00:04:14.460 But the real clincher here is that these industrialists, gangsters, just wealthy people from China would

00:04:22.500 take out that drug cash loan in Richmond, pay it back in China where their source of wealth is 0.99

00:04:28.040 into a criminal drug trafficking bank.

00:04:30.980 So if you can see the loop that this is facilitating production of fentanyl precursors in China,

00:04:36.480 it's facilitating the shipment of the drugs into Vancouver, the money is, the drugs are sold,

00:04:42.780 the cash is laundered in casinos and real estate, and it's paid back in China.

00:04:46.520 So I made the connections through my investigative reporting that this incredible underground banking

00:04:53.760 loop was pouring into real estate.

00:04:56.320 It was driving the opioid death totals across Canada.

00:05:01.080 And really, I proved that Vancouver is now a hub for these transnational gangs based in China 0.72

00:05:08.040 and producing fentanyl pills in Canada, shipping them around the world.

00:05:13.260 And the last level is I tracked back in time and found that there was strong, strong connections

00:05:20.340 between the transnational drug gangs, tycoons from China, and the Chinese Communist Party.

00:05:26.260 So at the highest level, this is geopolitics and very much, you know, it's not just about

00:05:33.060 money laundering, intelligence operations, economic infiltration to benefit the Chinese 0.56

00:05:38.260 Communist Party is all wrapped up in this scheme that has really, the rot has become very deep

00:05:45.140 in certain municipalities in Vancouver and Toronto too.

00:05:49.320 And it's amazing this is not discussed more and really broken down more than it has been,

00:05:53.320 because I'm sure a lot of people would listen in and go, oh, yeah, I've been watching some

00:05:56.180 of those Pablo Escobar things on Netflix and reading the stories is kind of like a small

00:05:59.540 time version of that, isn't it?

00:06:00.620 But based on what you write in the book, and about how big this gets in Hong Kong and Macau

00:06:05.160 and other jurisdictions around the world.

00:06:06.960 No, no, this is not a small time version of Pablo Escobar.

00:06:10.440 Pablo Escobar is a small time version of this.

00:06:14.800 That's the realization that I'm glad you made.

00:06:17.600 And I, everyone that reads the book has to make that that's exactly it.

00:06:21.560 I argue that as Canadians, we, it's very hard for us to get our head around the fact that

00:06:27.200 transnational gangs in Asia are the biggest, most powerful in the world.

00:06:32.480 In fact, they have subordinated Latin American and Mexican cartels, because they, underground 0.59

00:06:38.200 banking, this cycle I'm talking about, that's, let's just name the cities, Macau, Hong Kong,

00:06:45.220 Shenzhen, Wuhan, Vancouver, Toronto, Melbourne would be very strong notes.

00:06:50.360 But in the Western world, Vancouver, probably the biggest.

00:06:55.060 And really, Markham, in a very concentrated way, is starting to compete.

00:06:59.860 And the data point here is that Shilop Say, some of your listeners will recognize the name.

00:07:05.720 He's this alleged narco kingpin of a super cartel called the Company.

00:07:10.420 He was just, he's under an extradition order to Australia.

00:07:15.340 But he and his lieutenants, 25% of this super cartel's leadership is based in Vancouver and

00:07:23.400 Toronto, most specifically Markham.

00:07:25.720 Shilop Say, very strong in Markham.

00:07:27.760 And so my book showed this and explained that, as you said, for Canadians, we need to realize

00:07:34.360 transnational, the most powerful and prolific gangs in the world are being run out of Canada.

00:07:40.540 But the key here is they are politically protected.

00:07:43.400 Not only that, they are politically connected in mainland China, and involved also in, you

00:07:49.580 know, objectives for the Chinese Communist Party.

00:07:51.740 You know, Sam, there's one really fascinating paragraph in one of the chapters in the book

00:07:55.120 where you're talking about warfare that's taking place in the streets of Macau, people

00:07:59.500 gunning each other down, various different gangs fighting, a nurse dying in the crossfire

00:08:04.320 coming off her shift at a Macau hospital.

00:08:06.560 And then you go on to say that one of these gang leaders, he was ready for battle, but

00:08:11.380 10,000 kilometers from the war zone, living with his wife and young children in the East

00:08:15.340 Vancouver home that he had bought in 1994 for $500,000.

00:08:18.960 And in November 1996, armed with just his cell phone, he called in his orders.

00:08:23.700 So we actually have kingpins who are running the show, running gang warfare comfortably

00:08:30.500 from their homes in suburban Canada.

00:08:33.420 That's absolutely true.

00:08:34.940 And as I just said, this Chai Lopse figure, people are surprised with reports in Reuters that,

00:08:41.600 you know, this kingpin is a Canadian citizen that arrived in 1988 as a big circle boy in 0.93

00:08:47.420 Toronto, my book shows that big circle boys arrived in from 86 to 88 to 90 across Canada,

00:08:55.000 but especially in Toronto and Vancouver, and the big circle boys were involved.

00:09:00.020 They were the ones that were charged or contracted by a Hong Kong Macau triad to execute this rival

00:09:07.680 gang boss set up in Vancouver, Tan Sang Lai.

00:09:11.240 And your realization is correct.

00:09:14.140 In suburbs, you know, in sometimes in very nondescript homes, sometimes in what I call

00:09:19.820 sprawling, massive Italian mansions in the modern era that run illegal casinos, these

00:09:25.980 are gang bosses that are calling shots around the world.

00:09:28.800 And the most interesting thing that I found in that chapter, again, that both corroborated

00:09:34.180 what I was hearing and reading, you know, in very sort of legendary Canadian intelligence

00:09:40.040 reports and from legendary, well, let's just say credible sources, this case proved what

00:09:47.440 they were saying.

00:09:48.140 That is, police were allowed, because of certain circumstances, they tapped the phone of this

00:09:54.120 Vancouver gang boss.

00:09:55.820 They tapped the phone of the people trying to kill him in Vancouver.

00:09:59.000 They tapped the phones of highest level triad bosses in Hong Kong and Macau.

00:10:04.920 And as the gang war raged in Macau, they were surprised to hear that a high level Chinese 1.00

00:10:10.700 official got on the line with this Vancouver gang boss.

00:10:14.180 And essentially, the phone taps say, this Mr. Kwok, we don't know his first name, started

00:10:20.520 to mediate and said, OK, the Chinese state now, the gang war has to end.

00:10:25.540 You need to start talking to this rival triad boss.

00:10:29.120 In fact, we've installed a new boss who is not so brash and does not want to kill you.

00:10:34.820 And so the gang war ended within a few days.

00:10:37.680 And funnily enough, Macau casino boss, Stanley Ho, his name came up in the phone taps as well,

00:10:45.060 or surrounding the case.

00:10:46.640 So this all revolved around Macau casinos, their connections to high levels of the Chinese

00:10:51.460 state and the triads warring for control of them.

00:10:55.040 And the point was proven.

00:10:56.300 The Chinese state is interrelating and at the highest levels can direct these transnational

00:11:02.120 gangs.

00:11:02.740 Let's go back to something you just said at the beginning of those couple of minutes there,

00:11:06.280 Sam, because you said, according to police documents, according to police reports, because

00:11:10.340 someone may hear what we're saying, go, where's Sam getting all of this from?

00:11:13.500 And it's like, well, you're getting it from actual documentation that you've seen that

00:11:18.680 has been shared with you from law enforcement, security sources, things that are documented

00:11:23.840 that are sitting on the desks of various police forces across Canada and in senior offices

00:11:28.400 in Ottawa and RCMP offices and so forth.

00:11:30.660 I mean, people say, why aren't we hearing about this more?

00:11:32.420 Well, OK, that's a question maybe we'll talk about in a few minutes.

00:11:34.960 But this is something that is fully documented by Canadian law enforcement.

00:11:40.000 Is that correct?

00:11:40.480 It's fully documented.

00:11:42.640 And just to put a name to these legendary reports I'm talking about, the Sidewinder report

00:11:47.780 was leaked in the late 90s or early 2000s.

00:11:52.440 This was a report by CSIS and the RCMP that laid out the facts and evidence that the Chinese

00:12:00.020 Communist Party had made a compact with these Hong Kong tycoons who, in some cases, are triad

00:12:07.460 bosses or dragon heads, in some cases, do business with triads.

00:12:11.940 And a compact was made that the party and gangs will work together financially and in order

00:12:19.560 to sort of prepare for the takeover of Hong Kong.

00:12:24.360 This CSIS report said many of these high-level gangsters and tycoons have successfully immigrated

00:12:32.540 to Canada.

00:12:33.540 They have stick-handled, if you will, around red flags in immigration files.

00:12:39.020 There's been corruption.

00:12:40.360 And they have economically infiltrated at the highest levels of real estate, Vancouver and Toronto.

00:12:47.100 So this report was certainly buried.

00:12:51.500 And actually, from a large quarter of the political establishment in Ottawa, the report was scorned.

00:12:58.680 And there were attempts to discredit it.

00:13:01.900 But what the records I have found in the modern era and also in federal court files, what I

00:13:08.500 just told you about this Mr. Kwok, a Chinese official directing a gang boss in Vancouver,

00:13:14.480 this is in federal court files.

00:13:16.640 So there is both public source record, there are leaked intelligence reports, there are leaked

00:13:22.100 casino money laundering reports.

00:13:23.880 And matching intelligence that I get from high-level sources that really, the way I found, the

00:13:31.020 way I got such detail and deep reporting on in this book is that there are a number of

00:13:35.500 people in various Canadian government agencies that believe Canadians need to know this stuff.

00:13:41.540 And as hard as it is to believe, it was hard to believe for me until I saw so much corroboration

00:13:46.460 and documentation.

00:13:47.700 But here's the thing that I'm really left asking here.

00:13:51.040 And I know we're going to probably talk about some immigration fraud components as well

00:13:54.120 here.

00:13:54.660 Normally, Canadians get to know these things because, well, if you got all these shenanigans

00:13:58.940 going on, you're going to have criminal charges, they're going to happen in an open court,

00:14:02.780 and then court reporters are going to tell you what happened.

00:14:04.760 And there comes the paper trail and the public documentation.

00:14:07.780 But we've seen very little of that, despite the fact that these documents you're talking

00:14:12.020 about, they go back 10, 20, 30 years.

00:14:15.040 Well, there's so much going on.

00:14:18.620 To answer your question, I'll draw on just a couple modern examples.

00:14:22.900 We know very well what's going on, the controversy around the Winnipeg lab right now.

00:14:29.080 A scientist from China was working with People's Liberation Army researchers.

00:14:34.880 CSIS had warned Canada's government this should not be happening.

00:14:37.900 All kinds of dangerous material was sent to this Wuhan lab in 2019 that is now the focus

00:14:45.060 of deeper investigations into whatever happened in that lab.

00:14:50.860 Could it be related to the coronavirus pandemic?

00:14:55.060 But this is the example.

00:14:56.860 We are not hearing anything about the RCMP investigation.

00:15:00.800 Clearly, the government at some level is afraid of what is in the RCMP and CSIS reports in

00:15:07.840 this case.

00:15:08.980 And I don't think that, based on my knowledge, I really don't think criminal charges will

00:15:14.160 come forward in that case, even if it was the highest level espionage, because the government

00:15:19.280 has ways of sort of avoiding that.

00:15:22.220 Another case I report in my book is Cameron Ortis, the former RCMP highest level intelligence

00:15:27.480 official, there's a publication ban on his court case, the level of potential infiltration,

00:15:34.740 potentially giving protection to the highest level money launderers and gangsters in the

00:15:39.820 world.

00:15:40.660 It's very clear that Canada's justice powers that be do not want details to come out.

00:15:47.880 This could be very damaging with our National Security Alliance partners, the United States,

00:15:53.620 Australia.

00:15:54.060 So those are just a few examples of why these details don't come out.

00:15:58.420 The other factor is, Canada, why can we not convict transnational narco bosses? 0.72

00:16:05.040 Why did Australia seek to extradite Shilopse in the Netherlands when he was bound to fly to Canada?

00:16:13.560 Why did they go to the Netherlands instead of letting him land in his home base of Toronto?

00:16:18.240 Because they know that the legal system in the Netherlands is much more conducive to work

00:16:23.300 with allies like the United States and Australia to bring people to account.

00:16:28.480 And there's a lot going on there.

00:16:30.420 But what my sources would say, this would be experienced prosecutors, experienced police

00:16:35.640 detectives.

00:16:36.540 There's no such thing as a money laundering or drug trafficking case where charter of rights

00:16:42.200 sort of defenses don't come in.

00:16:44.220 And it's very difficult in Canada's legal system to get prosecutions and even to work

00:16:51.040 with allies who give Canada amazing facts and intelligence on who to target.

00:16:57.200 For example, I write in the afterword of my book how Mexican cartels had such a strong base

00:17:02.720 in Vancouver after 2010.

00:17:05.240 And they were using the Chinese triad underground banks to launder their money.

00:17:09.860 But the RCMP couldn't be a player while the DEA and Australian police have all this information

00:17:15.580 that should be prosecuted in Canada.

00:17:18.480 Yeah, it's interesting.

00:17:19.160 You referred to when, you know, why aren't we getting more action on this?

00:17:21.760 You mentioned justice officials.

00:17:23.420 Now, one can be partisan on this.

00:17:25.440 And I'm sure various, you know, people in political discourse will say, oh, well, you know,

00:17:29.840 Justin Trudeau, he's soft on China.

00:17:31.380 He admires the basic dictatorship, et cetera, et cetera.

00:17:33.600 And, you know, there's obviously a lot of truth to all of that.

00:17:35.700 But like, come on, this is a person who's been prime minister since 2015.

00:17:39.060 And what you were talking about is a problem that seems to have really locked in many years

00:17:44.460 before that.

00:17:45.220 So is this a political will issue?

00:17:48.660 Is this a sort of systemic issue in law enforcement, in the justice system?

00:17:54.460 I mean, what's the real holdup?

00:17:59.100 It's definitely both.

00:18:00.880 It's a systemic legal issue in that, for example, New York City, the FBI was able to

00:18:08.840 break the hold of the Italian mafia who had gripped large portions, some would say even

00:18:14.560 come to dominate New York City's economy.

00:18:17.420 They only broke that grip with racketeering laws, which allow police to, you know, convict

00:18:24.600 cases based on patterns and evidence and to get wiretaps.

00:18:29.000 In Canada, you know, there are very limited sort of organized crime prosecution laws.

00:18:35.960 But I know at a high level, Bill Blair, the Minister of Public Safety, has been asked, based

00:18:42.260 on the egregious transnational crime infiltration in B.C., he has been asked directly, will you

00:18:48.800 institute RICO or racketeering laws?

00:18:51.820 And the answer is, let's just, you know, put it this way, crickets, they're not moving

00:18:56.760 on it.

00:18:57.520 Some people tell me that this is the Charter of Rights, you know, an inhibition to deeper

00:19:06.400 foundational justice principles.

00:19:08.280 Is something that is such an excellent legal framework for honest Canadians, has it become

00:19:14.640 a block against transnational criminals that are setting up in Canada?

00:19:19.000 So that's a systemic issue.

00:19:19.800 How's it being used, though?

00:19:21.040 Because they're not even getting to the, you know, it's not like their defense counsel

00:19:24.080 even has the opportunity to stand up on the first day and make that argument.

00:19:27.560 It's like there's no willpower to even get to that point and force the issue.

00:19:31.620 So prosecutors that are involved in the highest level cases that I talk about in my book, these

00:19:37.780 would be transnational gang bosses, everyone knows that they're responsible for, they're 0.87

00:19:42.860 most responsible for the highest level of fentanyl deaths in the world.

00:19:47.160 They can't be prosecuted in Canada because evidence disclosure requirements are so stringent

00:19:53.940 in Canada.

00:19:54.680 The ability to get wiretaps is so difficult in Canada that many of these cases never get

00:20:01.420 to trial.

00:20:02.360 Many of these cases fall apart due to errors made with, you know, such voluminous disclosure

00:20:08.540 requirements.

00:20:09.840 Defense lawyers aren't even working.

00:20:11.340 I'm told that defense lawyers are a little bit upset that they really don't get long trials.

00:20:18.080 They don't get to get paid.

00:20:19.660 Maybe that's, I'm not trying to make light of it.

00:20:21.940 People have told me that the scales have been legally shifted so far towards, you know, organized

00:20:29.500 crime in Canada.

00:20:30.320 That's why we're getting this problem that is only now becoming recognized.

00:20:35.400 And at the end of the day, it is political will.

00:20:37.960 It would take, you know, bravery.

00:20:39.800 And actually, you might have to slay a few sacred cows legally to realize that some reforms

00:20:45.420 need to be taken because fentanyl deaths are, you know, this is like a warlike death total.

00:20:52.680 Real estate prices juiced by, like, you know, billions, billions, uncountable billions of

00:20:58.580 drug money in Vancouver and Toronto.

00:21:01.480 Let me just, there was a fentanyl super lab busted in a Vancouver neighborhood three weeks

00:21:06.800 ago.

00:21:07.140 The RCMP said it could produce 13 million fatal doses per week.

00:21:12.060 That's based on the raw precursors they found in this super lab that converts to something

00:21:18.360 like a billion, perhaps even two billion in profits on the street per month to whatever

00:21:24.960 cartel is running that lab. 0.80

00:21:26.320 So what I'm saying here is that the scales of justice are not being served by the damages

00:21:32.640 we see in society at this point.

00:21:34.460 It will take strong political will to have a fix for that.

00:21:38.140 Well, let's talk about some of the political will that perhaps heads in the other direction.

00:21:42.380 Some amazing things in here about politicians who are involved, compromised.

00:21:47.260 I don't know what the terms are.

00:21:48.940 One story that you tell, it is quite something.

00:21:52.040 A municipal politician in British Columbia, a municipal councillor in Burnaby, BC, who was

00:21:56.980 banned from casinos in British Columbia.

00:22:00.740 He would loiter around the VIP salon holding a man's purse.

00:22:04.380 He was passing casino chips to players.

00:22:06.880 It looked like he was a loan shark.

00:22:08.740 Obviously, in the sanitized corporate language of the BC Lottery Corporation, a banned lender or

00:22:13.980 a cash facilitator, someone who could reasonably be suspected to be laundering criminal proceeds

00:22:18.560 in the casino.

00:22:19.580 The story goes on.

00:22:20.740 Oh, yeah, he leaves the casino in a black Porsche Carrera, even though you know that his salary

00:22:25.560 was $60,000 a year as a councillor at that time.

00:22:29.080 This is an elected official in British Columbia.

00:22:32.400 This is an elected official.

00:22:33.960 And as I write, also a person who can vote on upzoning applications made by, and I know this

00:22:41.780 by the very same whale gamblers that he would have been loan sharking, that is, lending out

00:22:47.640 drug dealer cash to so that they could buy in, as they say, for maybe $500,000 in casino

00:22:53.760 chips per night in Burnaby or Richmond.

00:22:56.260 So this is the highest level corruption you can imagine.

00:22:59.340 It's clear that a transnational gang got a hold of this one politician, and my book shows

00:23:05.400 that it's very likely he's not alone.

00:23:07.700 He would be, in criminal law enforcement terms, his hands are the most dirty because they have

00:23:13.580 him handing out drug money in casinos.

00:23:17.160 They have him connected in secret files to various, very elite drug kingpins.

00:23:24.640 This would be what my sources say.

00:23:26.300 Redacted documents don't allow us to read some of the facts.

00:23:29.640 But this is just, you know, what appears to be the dirtiest of the dirty.

00:23:33.780 But there's a whole network of politicians in British Columbia surrounding the casino business.

00:23:40.720 My book points to a few that, you know, their transactions might not be so direct as this

00:23:46.560 politician, but they could be lawyers, they could be counsellors that are doing the bidding

00:23:51.560 of the Chinese Communist Party through various community groups.

00:23:55.020 And also, again, my intelligence sources point to very specific documents that won't be released

00:24:01.560 in Freedom of Information that point to deep penetration of transnational organized crime

00:24:06.740 into BC's political establishment.

00:24:09.460 So the corruption is, it's beyond scary.

00:24:12.080 When you, I, in my book, I point to whale gamblers that were gambling tens of millions per 0.95

00:24:21.200 year, very connected to China's military and state, very connected to weapons, people below

00:24:27.600 them on, on the record, I can read the records, people below them in hierarchy charts that I

00:24:33.380 obtained from the RCMP directly accused of being fentanyl precursor importers.

00:24:38.520 And yet none of this was stopped until my reporting brought it to light.

00:24:43.880 So Sam, when we hear that we need to deal with what's going on with the Chinese Communist 1.00

00:24:47.860 Party right now and their overtures around the world, we did a great episode the other

00:24:51.140 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

00:24:58.440 pressure other G7 leaders to get on board in the efforts to contain China, hopefully try 0.87

00:25:03.620 and get Justin Trudeau on board a bit more.

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?

00:25:16.400 Or do you think that this is also going on here?

00:25:18.500 Is this something that's being talked about by world leaders?

00:25:22.880 And is this part of the things they want to tackle?

00:25:25.460 Or do you think that this is a see no evil, hear no evil thing?

00:25:29.280 We already know this is a bipartisan move in the United States.

00:25:34.820 Government officials across the board have filed really briefs saying that,

00:25:41.260 Canada, where are you, are you with us on your position on China's interference, on China's

00:25:47.980 threat?

00:25:48.660 And specifically, Canada, are you with us on Chinese transnational crime threats?

00:25:54.200 Remember, my book shows, and on deep reporting, China is the greatest threat through interference, 0.97

00:26:01.320 threats to North American sovereignty, intelligence.

00:26:05.180 But also, Chinese transnational crime is the biggest public safety threat in Canada. 0.89

00:26:10.720 This is in US documents, Canadian documents.

00:26:14.200 And what my book shows is it all rolls together.

00:26:17.680 You can't separate the transnational crime, the fentanyl.

00:26:21.240 Why is it coming into North America?

00:26:23.160 Why can China not stop it when they have full control of those factories? 0.94

00:26:26.800 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

00:26:46.800 Party, is it really using gangsters to infiltrate other societies?

00:26:51.500 Mr. Mulroney said, there's no denying it, in diaspora communities, the party will use any

00:26:57.940 tool, and one of its best tools is co-opting criminal networks so that it can try to control

00:27:04.420 Canadians who are of Chinese descent.

00:27:09.240 There's intimidation, surveillance, there's violence, and this is, it all rolls into something

00:27:14.620 called the United Front.

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

00:27:37.500 Asian Canadians themselves, people who have come to Canada because they want to be here

00:27:41.480 in Canada.

00:27:41.960 They want to get away from that stuff because they are the ones who are seeing what's going

00:27:45.500 on.

00:27:45.700 You mentioned growing challenges in Markham.

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.

00:27:54.580 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, 0.52

00:28:04.100 and I was just asking her, oh, what do you think about all the stuff with China in the

00:28:07.040 news?

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

00:28:21.160 murder, lock them up. 0.99

00:28:22.040 And I was like, whoa, you know, this lady's hardcore in all of this. 1.00

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

00:28:33.720 to do something about this.

00:28:36.240 That's 100% true.

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

00:28:49.500 have traveled to Canada.

00:28:51.520 Some, you know, have been multi-generational families, some more recent immigrants, but they

00:28:58.000 came for freedoms and democracy.

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.

00:29:25.880 So what is happening in Hong Kong?

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.

00:29:54.200 My book shows that explicitly.

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

00:30:07.540 this book?

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.

00:30:20.140 They were praying for peace in Hong Kong.

00:30:23.180 They were surrounded by about 100 extremely aggressive pro-Beijing nationalists waving large

00:30:30.220 red flags.

00:30:31.460 They had to be escorted to safety by Vancouver police.

00:30:35.080 They had their pictures taken.

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

00:30:46.060 China-Canada relations committees.

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

00:31:07.980 the casino money laundering.

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

00:31:39.600 you're talking about right now.

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

00:31:48.800 more of a hero in that category.

00:31:50.280 I mean, Mao is a very hard line, and now Xi Jinping is described as pretty much the most

00:31:54.460 hard line leader since Mao.

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.

00:32:21.880 That's right.

00:32:22.560 And the point on Deng Xiaopeng is, look, the people that really get the party in Beijing

00:32:30.140 know that it's always going in one direction.

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.

00:32:48.040 In fact, to become the global power.

00:32:50.600 So, yes, this is one of those examples in my book where I had seen things in Vancouver

00:32:55.700 that I couldn't believe in 2017.

00:32:58.360 That is, these connections between Chinese military figures and known, the roughest gangsters 1.00

00:33:06.040 and alleged fentanyl dealers in town.

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

00:33:51.580 and the Chinese Communist Party.

00:33:53.640 And again, they're connected to drug trafficking gangs and their major Canadian real estate

00:33:59.520 investors.

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.

00:34:08.240 This is a cold case.

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?

00:34:41.080 How did that happen?

00:34:41.800 As you write in the book, Sam, you say most Canadians want their government to have humanitarian

00:34:45.660 immigration policies.

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 0.95

00:35:03.720 women are forced into selling their bodies in underground casinos and body houses in big 1.00

00:35:08.540 North American cities.

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

00:35:17.340 the United States with sex slaves. 0.52

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 0.71

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

00:37:10.420 land to develop in the 1980s and 1990s.

00:37:13.680 Those were people that were flagged for being some of the most dangerous criminals in the

00:37:17.940 world, and they got into Canada.

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,

00:37:34.360 that is the national system and Quebec system.

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 0.99

00:37:50.360 was just out and about in a Toronto city. 0.77

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 1.00

00:37:59.020 the streets.

00:37:59.740 She paused.

00:38:00.760 She froze.

00:38:01.800 She saw her abuser on the streets of Canada.

00:38:04.440 That person was also able to unscrupulously, to scrupulously, pardon me, lie in his application,

00:38:10.360 and he made it to Canada.

00:38:11.460 So you had the abused getting status here in Canada as a refugee, as she should have, and 1.00

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.

00:38:33.980 That's certainly happening.

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

00:38:53.880 wife in Vancouver before you arrived.

00:38:55.880 If you're a refugee, how are you also a millionaire? 1.00

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.

00:39:21.540 Somehow able to evade deportation.

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. 0.90

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.

00:41:46.500 That is jaw-dropping.

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.

00:46:38.180 And there's an answer.

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. 1.00

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.

00:48:11.280 I'll give you one example.

00:48:41.280 Willful Blindness, How a Network of Narcos, Tycoons, and Chinese Communist Party Agents Infiltrated the West. 0.95

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.

00:48:54.160 You've got to check this out.

00:48:55.160 Sam, good on you for writing this book.

00:48:57.300 It's been a great conversation.

00:48:58.660 Thanks for stopping by.

00:49:00.160 Well, thanks so much.

00:49:01.840 Full Common is a post-media podcast.

00:49:04.100 I'm Anthony Fury.

00:49:05.140 This episode was produced by Andre Pru with theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:49:08.980 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

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 You can help us by giving us a rating or a review and by telling your friends about us.

00:49:20.220 Thanks for listening.

Full Comment - June 28, 2021

How Communist China drives drugs, violence and inflated housing prices in Canada

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