The Chinese regime has teamed up with international criminal cartels
to pump the West full of drugs
and dirty money.
And it’s all happening right under our government’s nose
Welcome to China Uncensored, I’m Chris Chappell.
The Chinese Communist Party is at war with the West.
This isn’t a 20th century boots on the ground kind of warfare.
China has brought war into the 21st century through a massive, coordinated campaign of
global terror, using links to triads and our own politicians’ greed to undermine democracy.
Joining me today to talk about this is Sam Cooper.
He’s an award winning Canadian investigative journalist and author of the new book Wilful
Blindness: How a network of narcos, tycoons and CCP agents Infiltrated the West.
Sam, thanks for joining me today.
Thanks for having me.
Your book is Willful Blindness: How a Network of Narcos, Tycoons and CCP agents Infiltrated
the West.
So tell us, how did a network of narcos, tycoons and CCP agents infiltrate the West?
It's a very complex story.
But to simplify it, really, this starts in Hong Kong.
My a book gets into a corruption case that happened in Canada's High Commission.
Tycoons that are very powerful and tight in Hong Kong, and connected to drug and casino
money laundering triads, wanted to immigrate to Canada.
They were able to allegedly corrupt Canadian officials and immigrate and invest, especially
in the city of Vancouver.
Their connections were both to the Chinese Communist Party at a high level, for political
reasons, and to drug traffickers.
They used casinos to launder money.
They used British Columbia casinos brazenly, egregious money laundering.
We're talking bags of cash.
Hockey bags with from 500,000 to a million dollars in $20 bills.
This was a way for corruption suspects to get money out of China using organized crime
underground banking.
But there was also a scheme where intelligence agents were using organized crime.
So you can see when money flows out of China, it's not just corruption involved.
There was a level of espionage with the ultimate goal of influencing Canadian politics and
using Canada's economy to get a foothold really for Chinese state activity in the West.
This is the Chinese Communist Party actively using connections to its business elite's
underground triads to pump money into the West through drugs and human trafficking,
that's also part of this as well, and influencing Canadian politicians.
That's right.
In a boiled down nutshell, organized crime is working hand in hand with the Chinese Communist
Party.
My book showed examples of people who, on the one hand, are alleged gangsters and also
involved in intelligence activity.
Also involved in, at least on the surface, what is put forward as a legitimate business
activity.
So when you have people of great wealth that have established themselves in Hong Kong and
are being used in a symbiotic sort of dark alliance by the party in Beijing, this leads
to opportunities to influence Western politicians, to donate money to Western political parties,
to try to control diasporic communities in cities like Vancouver and Toronto to the extent
where you have people that are, to use a simple term, being run through Chinese consulate
officials, working together with casino money laundering gangs to rub shoulders with Canadian
politicians.
In the darkest cases, the same people I found were harassing or politically opposing democracy
activists, Hong Kong Canadians, Chinese Canadian dissidents, Uighurs, members of the Falun
Gong societies in Canada.
Not only does the Chinese government know about this, but the Canadian government does
as well.
That's a difficult one.
On the casino money laundering and organized crime side, what my book shows is, indeed,
there was willful blindness.
There had to be.
The police knew about these hockey bags of cash coming into casinos.
They knew that it was coming through the hands of persons who were loan sharks, persons who
were high-level drug traffickers under investigation, while either lending money or themselves high
rolling inside, for example, the Richmond River Rock Casino.
These are known high-level, organized crime RCMP targets.
This was known by everyone, from people working in the casinos, to police, to high-level government
officials.
It was known that this was seen to be by the good investigators as high-level drug money
laundering using B.C. Casinos.
It was allowed to happen.
Is the intelligence side of this operation allowed to happen?
My book didn't get into that level of willful blindness.
But it's reasonable to believe that the people...
There are politicians in Canada that understand that they're dealing with gangsters and people
from other governments asking them to act against their country's interests.
So at some level, the intelligence organized crime influence nexus is known in Canada among
politicians, among regulators.
How did you get started writing this book?
I got started writing this book, I have to take a step back and look at the days when
I was a young journalism student, back in 2005 at Langara College in Vancouver studying
the craft of journalism.
I saw the downtown east side, which literally is war zone conditions, where thousands of
addicts are clinging onto life.
They are in many cases, of course, on government subsidies that unfortunately in many cases
are spent immediately on heroin or fentanyl.
I couldn't understand that scenario in Vancouver.
How is this happening in a Western city?
How has this open-air drug market allowed to continue?
I couldn't figure it out.
Then I started to look at real estate in Vancouver.
Why were the prices just so far out of reach of the average incomes?
Why is this the super capital, sorry, the capital of super cars in North America, Lamborghinis,
Ferraris, McLarens, when people aren't declaring incomes to compare with other big cities in
Canada or the United States?
And the answer was, this has become a medical hub where there's so much narcotics flowing
in from offshore, so much addiction, so much money laundering has to occur.
That had to have an influence on housing prices.
I looked into those issues.
Started to put them together.
And this is what led me to sort of these higher-level later investigations where I saw that the
intelligence angle from other countries, such as China and Iran, using organized crime in
cities like Vancouver and Toronto was very present.
I imagine this must've been shocking for you to uncover.
I never stopped being shocked, from those moments in 2005, as a young student, looking
at the devastation of the downtown east side.
Look, paramedics are trained.
They take war zone training to work out of ambulances in the downtown east side of Vancouver,
because this is the epicenter of death related to heroin.
And now fentanyl.
I couldn't understand it.
That was shocking.
Real estate prices, I couldn't understand it.
Going fast forward to 2015, hockey bags of cash, $500,000 openly coming into the casino
night after night.
This doesn't happen, even in Las Vegas.
It doesn't happen in Macau.
Why is it happening in Vancouver?
Canada, a supposedly upright country with the rule of law.
It didn't make sense.
So by 2017, when I'm starting to look at, let's just say, a high-level People's Liberation
Army veteran, known to be a high-level organized crime suspect, and yet meeting with Canadian
politicians, very chummy with Chinese consulate officials, it doesn't make sense.
How is this happening on the west coast of Canada, where we have this nexus of organized
crime and Chinese state actors?
How is this activity explained?
I still can't explain why this is occurring in Canada.
I can say it is occurring.
The line is so blurry between triad member, PLA member and Communist Party member.
I talk a lot about unrestricted warfare or asymmetrical warfare.
And from everything you're telling me, this really sounds like this is the kind of drug
warfare they're talking about, or even how the housing prices are being through the roof.
It really seems like this is an aspect of this sort of asymmetric warfare.
People have different levels of comfort looking at the concept of gray zone conflict or hostile
state activity just below armed conflict, kinetic war.
Do states, such as Iran and China, use these asymmetric tactics?
I would argue that it's hard to argue a level of total strategic control in countries such
as China and Iran.
But I do think there is the pattern of states such as China using activities that are harmful
to other countries, perhaps allowing or not cracking down on factories producing fentanyl,
because China is making so much money from the production of pharmaceuticals.
There are a corrupt officials in China that are doing business with drug gangs.
There are corrupt officials that are making tremendous amounts of money in trade-based
money laundering.
China's economy, making so much money from all of this rolled together, that why would
they crack down on it?
My sources in intelligence or the police would say, "If they're not cooperating with Canada..."
When Canada goes to them and says, "Can you work with us on fentanyl trafficking?"
And China says, "Well, maybe if you let us put in our agents to go after our economic
fugitives, we'll work with you."
And Canada says, "I'm sorry, we can't allow that covert fox hunt activity to occur in
our country."
And China says, "Okay, then no help on fentanyl."
What do we have here?
This is a hostage diplomacy-style of state activity.
So are they directing those shipments of fentanyl to cities in Canada and the United States,
Australia?
I don't know that level of direct warfare is happening.
I do know an omission of enforcement is happening to China and why.
What is being done about this problem?
Are Canadian officials doing anything now that your book has come out?
Well, the book's only been out for less than two weeks.
I can say that it's starting to make some waves.
People in law enforcement and, of course, intelligence are taking it very seriously.
Here's the rub.
Some would say Canada's government hasn't been taking people in intelligence and law
enforcement themselves seriously.
This gets into the question of, why is the concept of a 5G network run by Huawei still
a possibility in Canada, when countries such as Australia and United States have completely
ruled it out?
I'm optimistic that my book, it has the chance to open up the eyes of mainstream readers,
if you will, and for them to start talking to their local politician and saying, "Why
aren't you acting on what looks like very serious issues?"
You would hope once that starts to happen, that politicians, high-level politicians,
in Ottawa, Canada's federal government, do start to take actions.
But I have to say, we're in a position where countries such as Australia and the United
States, I'm told they're about a decade ahead of Canada in terms of dealing with this, first
of all, interference from countries such as Iran in China, and this nexus of organized
crime working with state actors in countries such as China and Iran.
I bet that really affects the security dialogue between Canada and most of the other Five
Eyes countries.
That's undeniable.
My sources would say, "Canada is starting to look like not a great partner."
It's not due to the police.
It's not due to CSIS.
When they're supported, when they have their best leadership in place, these are leading
international agencies.
But Canada, for reasons that come from the ground up, or maybe the top down, doesn't
seem to be pulling its weight in intelligence and law enforcement internationally.
I think that's a huge problem.
Let me give you an example.
Canada's former top police intelligence official is now being accused of working with some
of the worst gangsters and drug traffickers in the world, profiting from helping them
evade detection.
This would be a form of protection of gangsters that we might expect in a country like China.
It's happening in Canada, allegedly.
Was this person, Mr. Ortis, perhaps working for hostile states as well to misdirect Canada's
policing investigations, to misdirect our intelligence?
That's an open question.
His case remains to be tried.
Yet the allegations would, it just follows that Australia and the United States would
start to hold on to their cards.
They'd start to hold on to their high-side intel and not share with Canada.
So it's a problem.
Absolutely.
Well, Sam, the book is an absolutely fascinating read.
I recommend it to anyone watching.
And I'll put a link below.
For anyone watching, where can they follow you?
They can follow me on Twitter @scoopercooper.
And they can also watch for my stories online on the internet.
Well, thanks, Sam.
It's been a pleasure talking to you today.
Thank you.
And thank you for watching.
If you want more, Shelley, Matt, and I had Sam Cooper on our podcast for an hour—to
hear more of the crazy stories of what’s happening with Chinese criminal gangs in Canada
and around the world.
So check out that episode of China Unscripted.
And also, you can now order Sam Cooper’s book Wilful Blindness on Amazon.
The link is below.
Once again I’m Chris Chappell, see you next time.