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http://www.ottawacitizen.com/national/000908/4108415.html

Ottawa Citizen
Friday 8 September 2000
(4) Mobsters target Parliament, RCMP commissioner says

Aim is to 'corrupt, destabilize' system

Tim Naumetz
The Ottawa Citizen

Organized crime mobs are targeting Parliament and other Canadian institutions in an attempt to spread corruption and political instability, says the new head of the RCMP.

During a remarkably candid news conference, Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli said yesterday that criminal groups are focusing on Parliament, the courts and other institutions with the aim of "destabilizing" the political system.

"For the first time in this country, we are seeing signs of criminal organizations that are so sophisticated that they actually are focusing on destabilizing certain aspects of our society," said Commissioner Zaccardelli. The commissioner is a 30-year veteran of the RCMP who was previously the force's deputy commissioner in charge of the fight against organized crime.

"That's a real threat to us. There are criminal organizations that target this destabilization of our parliamentary system."

Commissioner Zaccardelli's comments shocked MPs, who said the commissioner should inform the House of Commons, through Speaker Gilbert Parent, if the RCMP has evidence of political corruption or attempts to corrupt politicians.

Asked if he could cite cases where criminals have targeted politicians or whether he was "fearmongering," Commissioner Zaccardelli replied: "It's not fearmongering in the least. I can't give you, obviously, specific details, but we clearly have information that indicates that a sophisticated criminal organization, as part of their strategy, is not only to maximize their profits through illegal activity, but in doing that, in maximizing their profits, where they can attempt to try and corrupt and to try to destabilize (the) situation, that's where they flourish."

Asked what he meant about the threat to Parliament, the commissioner responded:
"The question of corruption. Corruption is always a potential problem around the world, corruption in a lot of places, unfortunately, exists. So the potential to corrupt by these criminal organizations is there. We have to be vigilant against that."

In further explaining his remarks, Commissioner Zaccardelli noted two prison guards have been targeted and killed in recent years in Quebec.

"That is something that's a new phenomenon for us," he said. "You have criminal organizations that clearly are targeting some people, the court systems and so on; we have situations where Crowns (prosecuting lawyers) are being threatened by criminals and so on.

"Our fundamental institutions and the people that work in it are actually being targeted by theses sophisticated criminal organizations. That never happened before."

Asked yet again whether the RCMP has evidence of cabinet ministers or MPs being targeted by organized crime, Commissioner Zaccardelli said: "I'm saying there are criminal organizations that we are aware of that ... part of their strategy is to target and to infiltrate Canadian institutions. If they have opportunities, they will not hesitate to try and attempt that type of behaviour."

Commissioner Zaccardelli's startling comments were reminiscent of controversial statements made by former RCMP commissioner Norman Inkster in the 1980s.

Mr. Inkster told a Commons committee more than two dozen MPs were under criminal investigation. He refused to name the MPs, and only a handful were charged in subsequent years. It was later learned some of the investigations were routine inquiries following complaints.

Government and Opposition MPs said they have heard nothing about criminal attempts to infiltrate Parliament or corrupt MPs.

"I certainly don't have any information that would suggest that sort of thing," said Mississauga West Liberal Steve Mahoney.

Mr. Mahoney said Commissioner Zaccardelli may have been warning about the kind of corruption that takes place in some countries but added: "If he's inferring something about Canada's Parliament, dealing directly with MPs, I would think he would have an obligation to report that to the Speaker.

"If he's got anything on anybody, he should come clean, it's pretty clear."

Winnipeg NDP MP Pat Martin also expressed surprise. "There's never been even a hint of that kind of thing taking place, not so much as a whisper," said Mr. Martin. "I think it's kind of irresponsible to make a statement like that and get the Canadian public looking under its bed."
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Montreal Gazette

Thursday 14 September 2000
(5) Taillibert: blame Ottawa, Quebec
Olympic Stadium architect absolves self, friend Drapeau in cost-overrun scandal
HUBERT BAUCH
The Gazette

In Roger's version, the 1976 Olympic Games came off thanks to Andre (Dede) Desjardins. Controversial Olympic Stadium architect Roger Taillibert says in his new book that the Games site wouldn't have been ready in time without the clearance the project got from the former Quebec Federation of Labour construction boss, who was notorious for his mob connections and was gunned down in a north-end restaurant this year in the distinct style of an underworld execution.

Taillibert recounts that the Olympic construction site was in anarchic disorder until the provincial government struck a deal with the construction unions for labour peace on the project. Without saying so directly, he suggests the provincial government bought the unions off with a secret deal. Taillibert and his patron, former Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau, had failed to strike a similar deal with Desjardins, even though they went so far as to take him to lunch at the Ritz-Carlton hotel. The French architect concludes the provincial authorities had means to entice the unions that the mayor couldn't offer.

"If the Olympic Games took place, it was thanks to Dede Desjardins," Taillibert concludes. "What irony!" This tale of how the Games really came off is one of numerous fascinating insights rendered from Taillibert's decidedly subjective point of view into the machinations of what has entered Montreal annals as the great Olympic boondoggle. It left the city more than $1 billion in debt and with a stadium widely regarded as a pox on ticket sales, whose roof has a history of caving in.

The book is titled Notre Cher Stade Olympique and is in the form of a series of posthumous letters to Drapeau, who died last year. It is in part a fulsome veneration of Drapeau and in part a bitter rejoinder against the 1980 Malouf Report, which pointedly fingered Drapeau and Taillibert as the prime culprits responsible for the Olympic project's staggering cost overruns and the defects of the stadium.

Taillibert dismisses Judge Albert Malouf, one of the province's most honoured jurists as "this little judge," and charges Malouf was biased against Drapeau and bent on whitewashing former premier Robert Bourassa and his Liberal government, and failed to pursue the true guilty parties.

Taillibert's book is the closest Montrealers are likely to get to Drapeau's long-promised but never delivered retort to Malouf. The architect writes at length how amazingly like of mind he and the mayor were during nearly three decades of acquaintance.

The guilty parties in Taillibert's tale include the federal and provincial governments, both of which, he charges, were out to cut Drapeau down to size because they feared his populist power. Along with petty politicians, he denounces incompetent local engineers, crooked contractors, quasi-Mafia construction unions and xenophobically parochial Quebecers, who treated him as a "maudit Francais."

Taillibert also contends that the notorious Olympic deficit is a myth perpetrated by Drapeau's political enemies and perpetuated by sleight-of-hand accounting. He maintains that tobacco taxes and lottery revenues, established to defray the Olympic building costs, should have put paid to any debt by 1983, but the provincial government has diverted some of the money into its general fund, thereby keeping $400 million of Olympic debt on the books.

He says the federal government was responsible for one-third of the billion-dollar cost overrun because it dithered for three years, from the time Drapeau landed the Games for Montreal, until financing measures were approved by Ottawa. He claims the motivation was the same as the provincial administration's - to make Drapeau look bad.

Taillibert loftily brushes off any blame for the Olympic Stadium's prominent flaws. Anything wrong with the building is the fault of engineers and contractors who failed to build it to his precise specifications, notably the towering mast and the retractable roof, now replaced by a permanent cover.

Taillibert blames the upper echelons of the project's management not only for shoddy work, but for being mulishly resistant to the avant-garde pre-stressed concrete technology he invested in the stadium. He says he was constantly snubbed as an outsider and, worse, a damned Frenchman, and that in the end, he was made a scapegoat.

"I became an ideal mask, promenaded without mercy in this carnival to protect the shamefully anonymous," he typically writes.

If the Expos aren't drawing major- league crowds at the Big O, it's not the fault of the stadium so much as the quality of the entertainment: "The truth is that a bad team empties a stadium, even the best stadium in the world."

Drapeau, he maintains, was a civic visionary of Athenian stature, while his enemies were craven political opportunists. He says he and Drapeau were slandered in the eyes of the world, but insists a fair public judgment once the truth is told will vindicate them both.

"To all the sourpusses and complainers who have associated the Montreal Olympics with the infamous leitmotif of 'deficit, deficit,' it must be said: Look at the accounts and judge for yourselves; was there impoverishment or enrichment?"
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http://www.ottawacitizen.com/national/000509/4069479.html

May9, 2000
(6) Alleged gangster's widow wants money back from MPs

Prominent Liberals put funds in trust when they learned donor was mob suspect

Ian MacLeod
The Ottawa Citizen

The widow of an alleged Russian mobster has filed suit against federal cabinet ministers Paul Martin and Art Eggleton and two other Liberal MPs to collect $33,000 in unspent donations her late husband made to the politicians' 1993 election campaigns.

The four MPs placed the money in trust in 1997 after learning that the donor, Toronto businessman Yosif (Joseph) Sigalov, was a suspected Russian organized crime figure. Mr. Sigalov died of brain cancer in September 1996 at the age of 46.

Now a Toronto woman who reportedly married Mr. Sigalov in October 1995 has filed suit against the politicians, claiming to be the trustee of Mr. Sigalov's estate and his sole beneficiary.

News of the lawsuit follows a Citizen report yesterday in which former solicitor general Robert Kaplan confirmed that after leaving federal politics in 1993 he acted on occasion as a business adviser to Mr. Sigalov.

Mr. Kaplan, who had no knowledge of Mr. Sigalov's suspected organized crime background until after Mr. Sigalov's death, was the cabinet minister responsible in the early 1980s for the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

In an interview Sunday, Mr. Kaplan said he first heard of Mr. Sigalov during the 1993 federal election campaign and of how "he had been a great benefactor for candidates."

David Hill, a Liberal party lawyer in Ottawa who is defending the four MPs, said yesterday his clients are entitled to keep the money but had been planning to donate it to charity because of its questionable source.

He said it is also legally unclear to whom the money would be returned. Mr. Sigalov reportedly had a number of ex-wives, children and creditors.

"Technically, we don't have to give it back," said Mr. Hill. "Everything was on the up and up," in accepting it. "But the party said, 'who wants to be using Russian mob money?' -- if it is."

But in June, Alexandra Pelts, Mr. Sigalov's widow, filed suit against the politicians, claiming she is entitled to the money.

Ms. Pelts and her lawyer could not be reached yesterday for comment. But court documents to support her suit say Mr. Martin, the federal finance minister, received a $10,000 campaign donation from Mr. Sigalov; Mr. Eggleton, the minister of national defence, $5,000; Toronto-area Liberal MP Maurizio Bevilacqua, $10,000; and Toronto-area Liberal MP Jean Augustine, $8,000. In all, the suit demands $33,000, plus accrued interest.

Mr. Hill, however, said Mr. Sigalov personally donated only $5,000 to Mr. Eggleton and $5,000 to Mr. Augustine. The balance of $23,000 came from companies controlled by Mr. Sigalov.

He said Ms. Pelts, if she's owed anything, is entitled to only $10,000. "These companies, if they're owed anything, would be where the rest of the money would go back to. I don't even know if the companies still exist."

Still, he is not satisfied Ms. Pelts is entitled to any money.

"I have talked to a daughter (of Mr. Sigalov's by another marriage) who was interested in the money. There was another (ex-) wife who may or may not be interested in the money. I have talked to some creditors of the estate that were interested in getting paid what they are owed by the estate.

"We are not satisfied that this claimant, as opposed to other former wives or children or whatever, (is) the proper beneficiary," he said. "If they want to take it to court, fine. We will do whatever a court tells us to do."

Mr. Sigalov's alleged organized crime connections were first made public in March 1996 when Vyacheslav Ivankov, then reputed to be the most powerful Russian organized crime boss in the U.S., was about to be convicted on extortion charges in New York. Mr. Ivankov, dubbed the Red Godfather, was reportedly Mr. Sigalov's brother-in-law. Based on RCMP wiretaps of telephone conversations between Mr. Ivankov and Toronto-based Russian crime boss Vyacheslav Sliva, the FBI uncovered a plot by Mr. Ivankov to extort $3.5 million from two New York investment bankers.

In court documents related to the case, an agent with the FBI's Russian Organized Crime Squad in New York alleged Mr. Sigalov was one of Mr. Ivankov's underbosses.

Those interests, according to the FBI, included a Moscow funeral home and Rolls Royce dealership and import-export companies in Toronto, New York, Vienna and Budapest, all allegedly used to launder millions of dollars from a sprawling criminal empire. FBI documents also alleged Mr. Sigalov was involved in drug trafficking, gun-running and extortion.

Mr. Sigalov was never charged by police in either country. Mr. Ivankov is now in a U.S. penitentiary. Mr. Sliva was deported from Canada in 1997.

A new book, Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America, says Mr. Sigalov also worked at several legitimate interests, including a Toronto bakery, as a venture capitalist, as publisher of an Orthodox Jewish newspaper and as an active member of the city's Russian Jewish community.

"But Sigalov's good deeds and legitimate business affairs were little more than a cover for international heroin smuggling, arms trafficking, and extortion," writes Robert Friedman, the U.S. journalist who wrote the book.

But Mr. Hill said there's no way the four MPs could have known in 1993 of Mr. Sigalov's alleged background.

"Our guys, in campaign financing, try to be squeaky clean as best they can, but they don't have the facilities in tracing money and finding out it was Russian drug money or something. So when something like this surfaces they say, 'well, OK, let's try and do the right thing,' which they're still trying to do."

When the MPs did learn in 1997 of Mr. Sigalov's alleged organized crime connections, Mr. Hill was assigned to try to return the money. But he was unable find anyone he considered a rightful heir. He said the question of what to do now is further complicated because Mr. Sigalov was issued tax receipts for his donations.

"If you give it back, what happens with the tax deduction that the guy got? How do you reverse that on the guy's taxes now that he's dead?

"In being able to issue tax receipts, we also have a responsibility to Revenue Canada to issue them properly. If we issued a tax receipt and then we gave the money back, I'm not sure that we don't have some sort of liability under those circumstances to Revenue Canada. I'm not sure we should be giving the money back without solving that problem."

Since filing the suit in June, Mr. Hill said, Ms. Pelt's lawyer has taken no further legal steps to move the case into a courtroom, "and if you ask me, I really wonder if (they) ever will.

"They just don't have a legal case. It was a donation made, receipts were issued, we don't have any legal obligation to return the money to them or to anyone. It's really us sort of trying to take the high road and say, 'well, if it's tainted money let's get rid of it,' " by giving it to charity.
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http://www.ottawacitizen.com/national/000508/4063232.html

Ottawa Citizen
8May2000

(7) Former minister worked for alleged gangster

Robert Kaplan says he knew nothing of Russian mob ties

Ian MacLeod
The Ottawa Citizen

Former solicitor general Robert Kaplan was an unwitting business adviser to a Toronto entrepreneur later identified as a key Russian mobster, according to a new book on organized crime.

Mr. Kaplan's business association with the late Joseph Sigalov is revealed in Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob has Invaded America. It follows earlier reports of allegations by Canadian and American authorities that Mr. Sigalov was a gangster with links to the dominant Russian-emigre organized crime group in the United States run by his brother-in-law, a man known as the Red Godfather.

There is no suggestion in the book or elsewhere that Mr. Kaplan's relationship with Mr. Sigalov involved anything but legitimate business.

Rather, the 296-page work by U.S. investigative journalist Robert Friedman offers a detailed account of how Russian mobsters have tried to establish contacts and win influence with unwitting North American politicians, business people and professional athletes.

As federal solicitor general in the early 1980s, Mr. Kaplan was responsible for the RCMP and, for a brief period, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. He retired from politics in 1993 after more than 20 years as a Liberal MP.

In an interview yesterday from the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, where he is on business as an executive for a Calgary oil company, Mr. Kaplan confirmed he worked as a business adviser for Mr. Sigalov, beginning some time in 1994 until shortly before Mr. Sigalov died of brain cancer in September 1996 at the age of 46. He believes they may have met at a Liberal party fund-raising event.

"He had a number of things he was doing in Canada," Mr. Kaplan recalled. "For example, he had gotten rights to a self-breathalyser test and he was looking into installing them in bars.

"And I looked into the regulatory aspect of it and tried to hook him up with some organization that might promote it in the interests of less drunk driving.

"That was one of the things we did together. I had maybe 10 or 12 clients and he was one of them, but I wasn't working for him full-time."

He said he learned only after Mr. Sigalov's death of allegations about his activities in his native Russia and, through media reports, of Mr. Sigalov's suspected links to his brother-in-law's crime group in New York City.

But he said he was never aware Mr. Sigalov had been implicated in Russian organized crime activities in Canada. In fact, he doubts Mr. Sigalov had the sophistication required to be a successful North American underworld figure.

Mr. Sigalov's alleged organized crime connections were first made public in March 1996 as his brother-in-law, Vyacheslav Ivankov, was about to be convicted on extortion charges in New York.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation believed Mr. Ivankov, known as the Red Godfather, was the most powerful Russian underworld figure in the U.S., with suspected involvement in murders, drug trafficking and gun-running.

Based on RCMP wiretaps of telephone conversations between Mr. Ivankov and Toronto-based Russian crime boss Vyacheslav Sliva, the FBI uncovered a plot by Mr. Ivankov to extort $3.5 million from two New York investment bankers.

In court documents related to the case, an FBI agent in the Russian Organized Crime Squad in New York, alleged Mr. Sigalov was one of Mr. Ivankov's underbosses involved in running some of the organization's criminal holdings from Toronto.

Those interests reportedly included a Moscow funeral home and Rolls Royce dealership and import-export companies in New York, Vienna, Budapest and Toronto, all allegedly used to launder millions of dollars from a sprawling criminal empire.

But Mr. Sigalov was never charged by police in either country. Mr. Ivankov is now in a U.S. federal penitentiary. Mr. Sliva was deported from Canada in 1997.

In Red Mafiya, Mr. Friedman says Mr. Sigalov also worked at several legitimate interests including a Toronto bakery, as a venture capitalist, as publisher of an Orthodox Jewish newspaper and as an active member of the city's Russian Jewish community.

"But Sigalov's good deeds and legitimate business affairs were little more than a cover for international heroin smuggling, arms trafficking, and extortion," writes Mr. Friedman.

Mr. Kaplan finds it all difficult to believe.

"I remember that there were sensational articles about the activities of that group in New York," he recalled yesterday. "All of this came out, I think, after �(Mr. Sigalov's) death. I never asked him about it or knew about it.

"But I think I sort of took the measure of the man as a rather limited fellow. To me, it just didn't seem credible that the kind of difficulty he had in grasping the Canadian business opportunity that he had asked me to work on, he had trouble with kind of coping with what had to be done to make a successful business in Canada or anywhere. And it made me very dubious that any of these allegations could be true.

"But on the other hand, he liked to kind of brag about himself. And I thought that maybe he felt that he could impress people by claiming an association in some of these activities."

Still "he didn't strike me as a person who would be capable of living at that level of danger, or at that level of criminal activity. It didn't make sense to me. I had and still have a lot of troubling believing," the allegations.

He said his business relationship with Mr. Sigalov ended shortly before his death. "I could just see that these things weren't working and didn't want to stick with it any more."

He added the RCMP, which according to the book knew of Mr. Sigalov's apparent mob connections in January 1995, never advised him to be wary of Mr. Sigalov.

"I know there were Canadian businessmen who wanted the RCMP to give them advice (on whether) to work with these people or not and the RCMP, in the cases that I heard, were always saying that they couldn't.

"They were very interested in what you had to tell, but they wouldn't give you any advice about whether these were people to avoid or work with."
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http://www.nationalpost.com/

Tuesday, May 09, 2000

(8) Alleged mobster's widow sues MPs Seeking donation money

Ian MacLeod
Ottawa Citizen

The widow of an alleged Russian mobster has filed suit against federal cabinet ministers Paul Martin and Art Eggleton and two other Liberal MPs to collect $33,000 in unspent donations her late husband made to the politicians' election campaigns.

The four MPs placed the money in trust in 1997 after learning that the donor, Toronto businessman Yosif (Joseph) Sigalov, was a suspected Russian organized crime figure. Mr. Sigalov died of brain cancer in September, 1996, at the age of 46.

Now a Toronto woman, who says she married Mr. Sigalov in October, 1995, has filed suit against the politicians, claiming to be the trustee of Mr. Sigalov's estate and his sole beneficiary.

David Hill, a Liberal party lawyer in Ottawa who is defending the four MPs, said yesterday his clients are entitled to keep the money, which was donated in 1993. He said they had been planning on giving it to charity because of its questionable source.

He said it is unclear who should receive the money if it was returned. Mr. Sigalov reportedly had a number of former wives, children and creditors.

"Technically, we don't have to give it back," said Mr. Hill. "Everything was on the up and up," in accepting the donations.

Alexandra Pelts, Mr. Sigalov's widow, has filed a suit against the politicians, claiming she is entitled to the money.

Ms. Pelts and her lawyer could not be reached for comment. However, court documents to support her suit say Mr. Martin, the federal Finance Minister, received a $10,000 campaign donation from Mr. Sigalov; Mr. Eggleton, the Minister of National Defence was given $5,000; Toronto-area Liberal MP Maurizio Bevilacqua, received $10,000; and Toronto-area Liberal MP Jean Augustine was given $8,000. In all, the suit demands $33,000, plus accrued interest.

Mr. Hill, however, said Mr. Sigalov personally only donated $5,000 to Mr. Eggleton and $5,000 to Mr. Augustine. The balance of $23,000, he said, came from companies controlled by Mr. Sigalov.

He said Ms. Pelts, if she is owed anything, is only entitled to $10,000. "These companies, if they're owed anything, would be where the rest of the money would go back to. I don't even know if the companies still exist."

Still, he is not satisfied Ms. Pelts is entitled to any money.

"I have talked to a daughter [of Mr. Sigalov's by another marriage] who was interested in the money. There was another [former] wife who may or may not be interested in the money. I have talked to some creditors of the estate that were interested in getting paid what they are owed by the estate.

Mr. Sigalov's alleged organized crime connections were first made public in March, 1996, when Vyacheslav Ivankov, then reputed to be the most powerful Russian organized crime boss in the United States, was about to be convicted on extortion charges in New York City. Mr. Ivankov, dubbed the Red Godfather, was reportedly Mr. Sigalov's brother-in-law.

Based on RCMP wiretaps of telephone conversations between Mr. Ivankov and Toronto-based Russian crime boss Vyacheslav Sliva, the FBI uncovered a plot by Mr. Ivankov to extort $3.5-million from two New York investment bankers.

Mr. Sigalov was never charged by police in either country. Mr. Ivankov is now in a U.S. federal penitentiary. Mr. Sliva was deported from Canada in 1997.
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http://www.report.ca/missed/p15i001106f.html

Report
6Nov00
(9) The Sidewinder scandal
A leaked report makes explosive allegations about links between the Liberals and Chinese agents
by Kevin Michael Grace
[ . . . ]

On October 20 the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), the government agency that oversees the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, issued its annual report. It devotes six pages to a joint RCMP-CSIS operation, Sidewinder, whose secret interim report, "Chinese Intelligence Services and Triads Financial Links in Canada," was issued in 1997. This report was suppressed, and all copies were ordered destroyed, as were all background materials.

[ . . . ]
According to Sidewinder, Mr. Li is a director of the Beijing-controlled China International Trust Investment Company (CITIC), which had 1997 assets of US$23 billion. CITIC owns or controls Cathay Pacific Airlines, Hong Kong Telecom, Star TV, Poly Technologies and Norinco, suspected of arms shipments to Mohawk reserves. Mr. Li's company Hutchison owns 49% of Husky Energy. CITIC has invested $500 million to buy Canadian companies Celgar Pulp Mill and Nova Corp Petrochemical. Mr. Li and his son own "at least one-sixth to one-third of downtown Vancouver" and have extensive real estate holdings in Toronto. CITIC has "developed...close business links with Power Corporation." (Andre Desmarais, Prime Minister Chretien's son-in-law, is president and co-chief executive officer of Power Corporation.)

Mr. Li is the largest (10%) single shareholder of CIBC, and a shareholder and director of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, which in the 1980s acquired the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank of Canada, Continental Bank and Lloyds Bank Canada. CIBC, in turn, bought the securities firms Wood Gundy and Merrill Lynch. Li Ka-Shing's son Richard bought 50.1% of Gordon Capital in 1985. (Jean Chretien was a senior adviser there from 1986 to 1990.)

None of the above proves that Canada has been subverted by the People's Republic of China, but the linkages and connections revealed between Mr. Li and Mr. Chretien and his family (which are not detailed in Sidewinder but were reported elsewhere) are, as SIRC might say, disconcerting.

But then, SIRC itself is not entirely in the clear. One SIRC member, James Andrews Grant, has a serious unreported conflict of interest. His biography on the SIRC Web site identifies him as a director of CIBC and chairman of the executive committee of the law firm Stikeman, Elliott, which has a long-standing relationship with CIBC's largest shareholder, Li Ka-Shing.
[ . . .]
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/gam/TopNational/20000429/USPYYN.html

China set up crime web in Canada, report says
(10) THE 'SIDEWINDER' SECRETS
Beijing, tycoons and triads teamed up, suppressed federal study charges

ANDREW MITROVICA and JEFF SALLOT
The Globe and Mail
Saturday, April 29, 2000

Toronto and Ottawa -- ANDREW MITROVICA in Toronto JEFF SALLOT in Ottawa
[ . . . ]
======================================================

The Globe And Mail

(11) Ex-spy takes on CSIS review body
Says security agency squelched report on threat posed by Chinese triads

ANDREW MITROVICA

Tuesday, October 24, 2000

Straddling his high-powered motorcycle and clad in leather pants and jacket, Michel Juneau looks more like a pinup boy than a veteran spy.

But for 16 years, the articulate and highly educated French Canadian worked inside the shadowy world of intelligence, first with the RCMP's Security Service and then its successor agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

"I loved and was devoted to the work," said the bilingual 41-year-old former intelligence officer and policeman.

Now, Mr. Juneau, who left the espionage agency earlier this year to set up his own security firm, has reluctantly emerged from the shadows not to spill secrets but to forcefully fire back at CSIS's watchdog, the Security Intelligence Review Committee, for a contentious report that it issued last week.

"Unfortunately, SIRC's report does a profound disservice to the men and women at the RCMP and CSIS who have dedicated their working lives to the protection of Canada and Canadians," Mr. Juneau said in an interview.

At issue is a sensitive probe of Chinese espionage activity in Canada, code-named Project Sidewinder, that was the product of years of joint analysis by CSIS and the RCMP.

Mr. Juneau, who worked in CSIS's research and analysis branch, co-authored a draft of the Sidewinder report with an RCMP intelligence analyst in May of 1997. It concluded that China posed the single largest threat to Canada's national security.

Ample evidence exists that senior RCMP officers found that the original report went a long way toward proving its overarching thesis and wanted to vigorously pursue its findings. But CSIS unilaterally shelved the report because it believed the study was based on inneundo.

SIRC has acknowledged that a tense schism percolated for years between the RCMP and senior CSIS managers over the fate of the original report. Despite that, in its annual report, SIRC dismissed the original Sidewinder report as "deeply flawed in almost all respects" and "rich with the language of scare-mongering and conspiracy theory."

Mr. Juneau, who was the chief analyst on the original Sidewinder team, which included three other intelligence analysts from CSIS and the RCMP, insisted that it is SIRC's report that is wrong, shrill and "silly."

"My colleagues at CSIS and the RCMP devoted a great deal of time and energy to the report, and I know that our findings, although disturbing and unsettling, were based on concrete evidence," Mr. Juneau said.

"We were not in the business of promoting or conjuring up conspiracy theories and any suggestion that we were is silly, wrong and betrays a profound misunderstanding of how we went about our work."

Rather, Mr. Juneau said, the Sidewinder analysts worked hard to identify an intricate web of connections between Chinese intelligence services and criminal gangs, which they were convinced posed a threat to Canada's national security.

"The original report was thorough and backed up by substantive and tangible evidence," he said. "Their [SIRC's] attack was, regrettably, insulting and deflected attention from the real issue. The report concluded that China posed a multifaceted threat to Canada, and the RCMP analysts agreed."

Indeed, Mr. Juneau said that the original Sidewinder team (it was only the second time the two agencies had collaborated on a major analysis) culled some of its information from a Chinese intelligence officer who defected in 1997.

The man, who was a member of the United Front Work Department, one of China's five espionage arms, went public with allegations that he had been ordered to go to Hong Kong to engineer a pact between Beijing and criminal gangs known as triads.

Mr. Juneau also pointed out that at the RCMP's request, the original Sidewinder team produced a binder, brimming with what is known in the intelligence business as facting. It provided documented evidence, culled from secret CSIS reports, other government departments and agencies and foreign intelligence agencies, that supported every single line in the original report, he said.

Mr. Juneau noted that other Western intelligence organizations and a bipartisan U.S. congressional committee have since produced reports that echoed many of Sidewinder's conclusions. "We were ahead of our time and that's what probably killed our report."

He also flatly rejected a suggestion in the SIRC report that his departure from the Sidewinder team was voluntary and simply the result of a internal reorganization.

"The implication is that I left the Sidewinder team willingly and voluntarily; that is simply untrue," Mr. Juneau said. "I wanted to see the project through to its end."

To his chagrin, CSIS brought in another intelligence officer to complete the report, renamed Project Echo. CSIS told its watchdog that the RCMP agreed with the report's tone-downed findings. But the RCMP informed SIRC that it was "not fully satisfied with the final report" because unlike the first draft it "fails to raise key strategic questions."

A SIRC spokesman refused to respond to Mr. Juneau's allegations.
======================================================

http://www.report.ca/missed/p15i001106f.html

Report
6Nov00

(12) The Sidewinder scandal

A leaked report makes explosive allegations about links between the Liberals and Chinese agents

by Kevin Michael Grace

RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli gave an extraordinary press conference on September 7. He told startled reporters, "There are criminal organizations that target the destabilization of our parliamentary system." The commissioner refused to give details but insisted he was not "fear-mongering." He concluded, "We don't want to wait until we become, unfortunately, like some countries around the world, where criminal organizations actually run part of the country."

On October 20 the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), the government agency that oversees the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, issued its annual report. It devotes six pages to a joint RCMP-CSIS operation, Sidewinder, whose secret interim report, "Chinese Intelligence Services and Triads Financial Links in Canada," was issued in 1997. This report was suppressed, and all copies were ordered destroyed, as were all background materials.

Project Sidewinder was abandoned but then restarted in 1998. A secret final report, "Echo," was issued in 1999. Sources close to Sidewinder have alleged that its 1997 report was first killed and then gutted because it revealed Chinese infiltration as a grave threat to Canadian security and sovereignty.

The SIRC report rejects these allegations. It finds "no evidence of political interference" and claims Sidewinder "was not terminated; it was delayed when its initial product proved to be inadequate." The 1997 report is judged "deeply flawed...a loose, disordered compendium of 'facts' connected by insinuations and unfounded assertions. Overall, the document is rich with the language of scare-mongering and conspiracy theory." SIRC concludes that the destruction of "'transitory' documents related to Sidewinder's first draft" was "standard practice." The disappearance of other "non-transitory" documents is described as "disconcerting" but of no "material impact."

The timing of the SIRC report two days before an election call and its pre-release leak to the National Post are suspicious. SIRC said in September that the report would not be released until the end of the year. Even more suspect is the September 25 assertion in the House of Commons by MP Lynn Myers, parliamentary secretary to Solicitor-General Lawrence MacAulay: "I would like to emphasize that I was not reading from or directly quoting the SIRC report, which is a classified report." He was referring to his September 20 statement to Canadian Alliance MP Jim Abbott dismissing the 1997 Sidewinder report as "deeply flawed" and a "conspiracy theory"--phrases identical to those used in the then-supposedly unwritten, unread, classified SIRC report.

Unfortunately for the Liberals, however, all copies of Sidewinder were not destroyed. The Canadian Alliance and various media, including this magazine, now possess them. The report, 30 pages long and badly translated from the original French, makes a shocking allegation--Hong Kong tycoons, triads (gangs) and Chinese intelligence services "have been working for 15 years in concert with the Chinese government, and some of their 'financial ventures' in Canada serve to conceal criminal or intelligence activities."

These activities include money laundering, heroin trafficking and the transfer of economic, high technology and intelligence data to Beijing. Sidewinder alleges the corruption of the Canadian business and political establishments: "The triads, the tycoons and [Chinese intelligence] have learned that [the] quick way to gain influence is to provide finance to the main political parties...China has obtained access to influential figures who are now or once were active at various levels of Canadian society."

Foremost among the Chinese tycoons, according to Sidewinder, is Li Ka-Shing, of whom U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher has testified, "The U.S. Bureau of Export Affairs, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and the Rand Corporation...have identified Li Ka-Shing and [his company] Hutchison Whampoa as financing or serving as a conduit for Communist China's military for them to acquire sensitive technologies and other equipment." Last year Forbes estimated Mr. Li's family as the eighth richest in the world, with assets totalling US$10.6 billion.

According to Sidewinder, Mr. Li is a director of the Beijing-controlled China International Trust Investment Company (CITIC), which had 1997 assets of US$23 billion. CITIC owns or controls Cathay Pacific Airlines, Hong Kong Telecom, Star TV, Poly Technologies and Norinco, suspected of arms shipments to Mohawk reserves. Mr. Li's company Hutchison owns 49% of Husky Energy. CITIC has invested $500 million to buy Canadian companies Celgar Pulp Mill and Nova Corp Petrochemical. Mr. Li and his son own "at least one-sixth to one-third of downtown Vancouver" and have extensive real estate holdings in Toronto. CITIC has "developed...close business links with Power Corporation." (Andre Desmarais, Prime Minister Chretien's son-in-law, is president and co-chief executive officer of Power Corporation.)

Mr. Li is the largest (10%) single shareholder of CIBC, and a shareholder and director of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, which in the 1980s acquired the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank of Canada, Continental Bank and Lloyds Bank Canada. CIBC, in turn, bought the securities firms Wood Gundy and Merrill Lynch. Li Ka-Shing's son Richard bought 50.1% of Gordon Capital in 1985. (Jean Chretien was a senior adviser there from 1986 to 1990.)

None of the above proves that Canada has been subverted by the People's Republic of China, but the linkages and connections revealed between Mr. Li and Mr. Chretien and his family (which are not detailed in Sidewinder but were reported elsewhere) are, as SIRC might say, disconcerting.

But then, SIRC itself is not entirely in the clear. One SIRC member, James Andrews Grant, has a serious unreported conflict of interest. His biography on the SIRC Web site identifies him as a director of CIBC and chairman of the executive committee of the law firm Stikeman, Elliott, which has a long-standing relationship with CIBC's largest shareholder, Li Ka-Shing.

Canadian Alliance MP Jim Abbott, who raised the Sidewinder issue in the Commons, reports that he was immediately denounced by a Liberal MP as a "racist." He adds, "Unfortunately, many Canadians are prepared to buy into these labels, and for that reason they find so much of this �[Sidewinder] unbelievable."

Mr. Abbott takes pains to stress that while he understands "there is a very malicious, a very serious criminal side to triad organizations, there's also the other side within the Chinese culture, where they are part of exchanging power and influence. This is something that we, from our Caucasian, Judeo-Christian basis, just don't comprehend."

Elections Canada loopholes make it easy for gangsters and foreign agents to contribute to Canadian politicians, money which is sometimes received unwittingly. While Mr. Abbott admits his party has "not taken any formal steps" to prevent such occurrences, he explains, "We're very deeply concerned about it and are doing our level best with what information we have to make sure we aren't compromised."
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29May00
(13) Chinese triads sought foothold in Vancouver port operations
Fabian Dawson, Staff Reporter The Province

The Vancouver Port Authority ignored warnings about the Chinese business interests it was wooing in the 1990s -- allowing a number of questionable business connections to take root in the port, The Province has learned. In the mid-'90s, as courting efforts aimed at Chinese shipping giant Cosco went into overdrive, intelligence officials -- including local ports police -- sounded alarm bells about the conglomerate's questionable connections. The shipping line is intimately linked to the China International Trust and Investment Corp., a key fundraiser for the Chinese government and a technology-acquiring source for China's military.

U.S. Senate investigators and Canadian intelligence officials have described Cosco as the merchant marine of the Chinese military.

Its vessels have been caught carrying thousands of weapons into California and Chinese missile-technology and biological-warfare components into North Korea, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran, according to U.S. intelligence reports. Last summer -- two years after the ports police were disbanded -- the port signed a deal with Cosco to make Vancouver its gateway to North America. Cosco had chosen the only major port on the West Coast of North America without a dedicated police force.

Port officials maintain they have no evidence Cosco is directly involved in any illegal activity and cannot recall receiving police warnings. Cosco officials have declined interviews.

Police and immigration documents obtained by The Province show that, in the early '90s, Chinese mafia members or triads were attempting to infiltrate port operations.

In one case, a man identified as Chan Chung Hiu applied for a visitor visa at the Canadian consulate in Hong Kong to come to Vancouver on Jan. 14, 1992. Chan said he was an advisor to a company that had concluded a deal with the B.C. government to take over operations at one of the docks.

Background checks conducted found that Chan was a member of the notorious Sun Yee On triad and had served a four-year jail term for armed robbery in Hong Kong.

Chan abandoned the application after being asked to produce a police certificate. In another case, members of the same triad group, who are among the world's biggest heroin traffickers, were seen entertaining a senior officer of the now defunct Co-Ordinated Law Enforcement Unit. The party aboard a yacht was hosted by a Vancouver-based shipping company suspected of having links with the Chinese mafia.
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