HEZBOLLAH'S CANADIAN MONEY LAUNDERING OPS

Professional money laundering networks are growing in Canada, washing vast sums of cocaine and fentanyl cash, and helping to drive up prices in Vancouver and Toronto real estate. Canada’s federal government proposed a new federal anti-money laundering task force last week, specifically to tackle these concerns. But according to U.S. law enforcement sources, Canada has been aware of this for over a decade. This story explains untold international details behind recent RCMP investigations, missed early warnings, and lessons from Australian police, that could jump-start Canada’s late response to these growing risks, sources say.

In January 2008, a team of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents travelled to Ottawa to meet with RCMP leaders. They had stunning news. The DEA said an elite group of Middle East narco-terrorists in Colombia was using Canada as a key money laundering hub.

According to a former senior U.S. official with knowledge of the meeting, the DEA had “dirty calls” — meaning calls providing criminal evidence of cocaine shipments and cash movements in Canada — from narco-kingpins in Colombia to a network of operatives in Halifax, Vancouver, Calgary, and London, Ont.