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CSIS warned Health Canada of “insider threat” from Wuhan Institute-tied scientist Dr. Qiu Seven Months Before Lethal Ebola Shipped to China

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Sam Cooper 

@samthebureau

In an explosive admission, Parliament’s Canada-China Committee has confirmed that Canada’s spy agency, CSIS, issued a direct and unheeded warning to senior health officials in August 2018, raising concerns about “insider threat activities” linked to Dr. Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng.

This alert, delivered seven months before the couple’s network—with connections to the highest levels of Chinese biological weapons research—coordinated the shipment of live Ebola and Henipah virus samples from Canada’s high-security National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), highlighted risks posed by their continued access to sensitive materials.

“CSIS held a briefing for personnel responsible for security at [Public Health Canada],” in August 2018 that “focused on foreign interference and included possible indicators of insider threat activities, as well as other security risks,” according to CSIS’s submission to the Committee. In CSIS’s presentation, “student programs were identified as being one of these possible threat vectors,” prompting “[Public Health Canada] to flag two scientists to CSIS, Dr. Cheng and Dr. Qiu,” the Committee report, released Tuesday, states.

Despite these explicit warnings, no immediate restrictions were placed on Qiu, Cheng, or their Chinese students’ access to Canada’s sensitive research materials. In December 2018, Public Health Canada authorized a fact-finding investigation into the concerns, but the delayed response effectively allowed them to continue their operations, further endangering Canada’s security.

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The Committee report also finds—like the ongoing Hogue Commission—that Justin Trudeau’s government, including senior bureaucrats and ministers, showed a reluctance to act on or even acknowledge urgent alerts from CSIS, exposing a stark divide between CSIS’s view of Chinese threats and Trudeau’s.

Dr. Qiu’s associations with China’s military and scientific programs had deep roots. She began her work at the Winnipeg NML in 2003, followed by her husband’s employment there in 2006.

As early as 2013, Keding Cheng filled out an application for the PRC’s “Science and Technology Innovation Talent Program of Henan Province,” requiring applicants to “passionately love the socialist motherland [PRC]” and maintain Chinese citizenship.

By 2016, Dr. Qiu was nominated for an award by a senior military official from the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences, recognizing her collaborations with Major-General Chen Wei, a leading figure in China’s biological weapons research. CSIS investigations revealed that Dr. Qiu and Major-General Chen collaborated on multiple research projects dating back to 2012.

Dr. Qiu’s use of Canada’s facilities to benefit China was well recognized in Beijing. An award nomination for Dr. Qiu noted that she “used Canada’s Level 4 Biosecurity Laboratory as a base to assist China to improve its capability to fight highly pathogenic pathogens … and achieved brilliant results.”

In October 2016, Dr. Qiu co-authored a paper with Major-General Chen and other scientists affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences, further deepening her connection to Chinese military research. By this time, Qiu had also been recruited into China’s Thousand Talents Program—a PRC initiative aimed at harnessing international scientific expertise—and these affiliations, conspicuously absent from her Canadian curriculum vitae, made her a person of interest to CSIS, especially as her work increasingly intersected with China’s biosecurity research.

Concerns over Qiu and Cheng’s activities continued to mount at the NML. In October 2018, Cheng, accompanied by a restricted visitor, attempted to exit the lab with two Styrofoam containers, claiming they were empty. By January 2019, Cheng breached security again by using another employee’s passcode to enter the NML.

On March 23, 2019, Public Health Canada received its fact-finding report, which advised administrative investigations into Qiu and Cheng. Yet, only days later, on March 31, live samples of Ebola and Henipah viruses were shipped from the NML to the WIV, highlighting critical lapses in Canada’s security protocols.

In response to these revelations, the Committee’s report outlines recommendations to safeguard Canada’s scientific resources from similar threats in the future. Chief among these is a call for the Government of Canada to immediately terminate all research collaboration with PRC-affiliated entities in sensitive fields, such as artificial intelligence, aerospace, and advanced digital infrastructure.

A key recommendation is to designate the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Thousand Talents Program as Named Research Organizations under Public Safety Canada, subjecting them to enhanced scrutiny and restricted partnerships due to their potential security risks. Furthermore, the Committee suggests that Canada explore constitutionally compliant legal measures to prevent individuals under national security investigation from leaving the country. Despite RCMP investigations, the couple was able to leave Canada.

As investigations mounted, irregularities in the WIV shipment were noticed, and it was only in January 2021 that Public Health Canada terminated the couple’s employment. Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council, acknowledged with evident understatement, “it is a timeline that needs to be looked at.” However, Richard Fadden, the director of CSIS from 2009 to 2013, testified that the timeline “was too long” and the viral shipment to WIV “should not have happened.”

In his opinion, the incident at the Winnipeg NML revealed a deep cultural issue long present in Canada’s federal administration. “I don’t think the culture in this particular lab and in large parts of the public service had caught up with the change in facts as we understand China,” Fadden said. His comments emphasize a notable gap between CSIS’s understanding of the Chinese threat and that of Trudeau’s administration.

“This gap in the understanding of risk between national security and science sectors at the federal level, particularly with regard to the threat to Canadian interests posed by actions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was illustrated in testimony before the Special Committee,” the report says.

On one hand, Minister of Health Mark Holland noted that “countries such as China are implicating themselves in our domestic processes in a way that would have been unimaginable just five years ago” and are “potentially willing, in this instance, to use pathogens that threaten humanity in order to advance their geopolitical agenda.” But Fadden pointed out that “CSIS was already aware of concerns about the PRC’s actions,” noting that since Xi Jinping’s rise to power in 2013, the institutionalization of espionage and interference techniques by the CCP has intensified.

Adding to these concerns is the Trudeau government’s controversial denial of access to related records, noted by the report, raising questions of transparency and whether there may have been a cover-up of key details surrounding the case.

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espionage

Three Steps to Fixing the FBI: Interview with Whistleblower Colleen Rowley

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 From Matt Taibbi of Racket News 

Depoliticization, decentralization, and transparency are all achievable goals

On August 13, 2001, 33-year-old French citizen Zacarias Moussaoui paid $6,800 in $100 bills to train on a 747 simulator at the Pan-Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minnesota. A retired Northwest Airlines pilot named Clarence “Clancy” Prevost thought Moussaoui’s behavior was odd for someone with no pilot’s license and told his bosses as much. When they said Moussaoui had paid and they didn’t care, Prevost said, “We’ll care when there’s a hijacking and the lawsuits come in.”

The company went to the FBI and on August 16, in what should have been one of the biggest arrests in the history of federal law enforcement, Moussaoui was picked up on an immigration violation. Agents on the case wanted permission to search Moussaoui’s belongings, with one asking superiors as many as 70 times for help in obtaining a warrant. The situation grew more urgent when the French Intelligence Service sent information that Moussaoui was connected to Islamic radicals with ties both to Osama bin Laden and the Chechen warlord Khattab, and that even within this crowd, Moussaoui was nicknamed “the dangerous one.”

Coleen Rowley, the Chief Division Counsel for the Minneapolis Field Office, absorbed agents’ concerns quickly and was aggressive in asking superiors to seek a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to investigate further. One of the goals was a look at Moussaoui’s computer, as agents believed he’d signaled he had “something to hide” in there. But unlike the former Northwest pilot Prevost, whose superiors trusted his judgment and escalated his concerns, Rowley and the Minneapolis field office were denied by senior lawyers at FBI Headquarters. The Bureau was sitting on the means to stop 9/11 when the planes hit the towers.

This story is actually worse than described, as Rowley made clear in what became a famous letter she wrote to then-Director Robert Mueller the following May. “Even after the attacks had begun,” she wrote, “the [Supervisory Special Agent] in question was still attempting to block the search of Moussaoui’s computer, characterizing the World Trade Center attacks as a mere coincidence with Misseapolis’ prior suspicions about Moussaoui.”

While the Bureau blamed 9/11 on a lack of investigatory authority, the actions of the Minnesota office showed otherwise. Rowley’s decision to confront Mueller with a laundry list of unnecessary bureaucratic failures made her perhaps the FBI’s most famous whistleblower. Her letter excoriated the Bureau’s Washington officeholders for failing to appreciate agents in the field, and for implicitly immunizing themselves against culpability.

“It’s true we all make mistakes and I’m not suggesting that HQ personnel in question ought to be burned at the stake, but, we all need to be held accountable for serious mistakes,” she wrote, adding: “I’m relatively certain that if it appeared that a lowly field office agent had committed such errors of judgment, the FBI’s [Office of Professional Responsibility] would have been notified to investigate and the agent would have, at the least, been quickly reassigned.”

The relentless and uncompromising style of Rowley’s letter made it a model for whistleblower complaints. As the administration of George W. Bush hurtled toward war in Iraq, Rowley was made a cultural and media icon, occupying the center spot on Time magazine’s “Persons of the Year” cover in January, 2003.

For these reasons and more I was pleased to see after running articles earlier this week about the FBI and the reported choice of Kash Patel as Director that Coleen commented under the second one. I’d reached out to her previously after four whistleblowers came forward about questionable post-J6 investigations, and with the choice of Patel and rumors of a major housecleaning of the Bureau’s Washington office, similar issues seemed in play.

“A large majority of FBI agents always held Headquarters in contempt, knowing that it only attracted the losers, brown-nosing careerist political hacks who wanted to climb the ladder to go thru the ‘revolving door’ at age 50 to make their corporate millions,” she wrote. “The best, most competent agents typically refused to sacrifice their integrity and their families to climb the ladder in that Washington, DC cesspool.”

Part of my personal frustration with the FBI story is that the audiences that cared about its Bush-era offenses have largely turned a blind eye to its issues since Donald Trump’s rise to power, even though many problems are similar. Coleen, who manages the tough trick of maintaining the respect of both liberal and conservative audiences, is the perfect person to help bridge that gap. I reached out to her earlier this week and we talked about Patel, the long-term challenges facing the Bureau, and possible fixes.

MT: Kash Patel made public comments about closing the Washington headquarters and turning it into a “museum of the deep state.” He added he’d then “take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals.” Does that make any sense?

Coleen Rowley: I hate to go to bat for Kash Patel because I’ve been disappointed by all of these people in Washington. It’s such a cesspool. I really don’t think anybody can keep their head above it. So I hate to really laud him, but I do think he is completely correct on three or four things, and they’re major things. And he’s getting smeared for the thing that he’s most correct about. FBI headquarters: the FBI itself wants to take that down.

MT: How?

Coleen Rowley: Agents hate the J. Edgar Hoover building on Philadelphia Avenue. They’ve been talking about moving forever, all the agents. It was considered a matter of pride to not stoop to go to headquarters. This goes way back. Everyone knew that the ones who were going to headquarters were the ones trying to climb the ladder. They didn’t care about cases. They would always do what’s politically correct. And so they were all made fun of. In fact, Jules Bonavolonta wrote a book about how bad headquarters was.

MT: Is it The Good Guys?

Coleen Rowley: That sounds right. Everyone in the FBI knew that the people in that building were corrupted, because they’d decided to sacrifice themselves to go to headquarters in order to become somebody, by managing. And then especially in later years, the real incentive was to go through that revolving door to make a lot of money. And that’s the Strzoks and McCabes, and all those people.

MT: You’ve talked in the past about a dichotomy between agents in the field and the politically-minded managers at headquarters. Why is that divide harmful?

Coleen Rowley: Because the real work is done in the field. Headquarters was just there to help you do your work. Well, the 9/11 story is a perfect example. I wrote another op-ed in the Los Angeles Times called WikiLeaks and 9/11: What If? It was about this whole idea that’s very counterintuitive to what people are brainwashed to think, but sharing information is the key. The 9/11 Commission even said that if they had just shared information between agencies and then with the public, 9/11 would not have happened.

MT: They said there was a “failure to connect the dots,” I think.

Coleen Rowley: I was asked this when I testified to the Senate Judiciary about siloing and how the information, when it goes up the pipeline, gets convoluted and bottlenecked at headquarters because they want to keep power for themselves there. They really don’t want to let the field and the agents do the job. They want to have so-called oversight. I mean, that’s the good term for it, oversight, but it’s worse than that. They just want to keep the power there.

MT: You wrote that one of the things you liked was the possibility that Patel might decentralize the Bureau. What might that entail?

Coleen Rowley: They could delegate down FISA, and I’m not the first person to have this idea. Legal scholars say one of the best ideas to avoid this bottlenecking of information that occurs at headquarters is for the FISA judges not to have to travel to one particular SCIF [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility] in Washington. Keep the judges actually out in the field.

MT: I didn’t realize that.

Coleen Rowley: Yeah. They have SCIFs all over the country. So it’s not a problem. And it could be easily delegated down. Why does every request have to go through headquarters and the DOJ, except for control reasons? In all other matters, like criminal Title IIIs, you go straight to a judge. Some judges, they’re going to have differing opinions on things. And maybe a judge, every once in a while, would say no to a Title III.

MT: But that happens anyway, doesn’t it?

Coleen Rowley: Yeah. Very seldom with FISA, but yes. With a FISA application, they’re usually a hundred pages long and there’s tons of probable cause, and every Title III I ever read was beyond reasonable doubt by the time a judge saw it, to be honest. But this travesty that occurred with FISA is because it’s all bottlenecked up there for control in Washington DC, and with a handful of people who don’t want to share this information. I mean, I’ve got so many stories. They won’t even share the Moussaoui story with other offices even after 9/11.

MT: What?

Coleen Rowley: Yeah, because they’re trying to cover it up… It’s a long story but the desire for control at headquarters is a huge thing.

MT: The last time we talked, you might’ve mentioned the suggestion of having more of the Bureau’s top officials gain experience in the field. Wouldn’t that give them more grounding in what’s actually going on in the world? It seems like that’s a problem.

Coleen Rowley: These supervisors at headquarters learn bad habits. You try to “punch your ticket.” That’s the terminology. You try to go there for your year and a half. You hate it, but you do it. You have to bend over and please the bosses to get through that year and a half in order to “punch your ticket” and climb the ladder. The risk aversion is incredible. As a whole, the most competent and best investigators, and this goes to Kash Patel, he gets kudos for actually having investigated something. He was a public defender for seven years, so he has seen things from the other side of an investigation. Meanwhile, by contrast, Comey came out of Lockheed, and I forget where Wray came from [eds. note: Wray worked at King and Spaulding, earning $14 million advising clients like Chevron, Wells Fargo, and Johnson & Johnson], but they came out with millions in their pockets. What is their background? Did they ever actually investigate? Did they ever actually even work in criminal justice? No. So they are political creatures. Not case-makers. Kash at least has some experience.

MT: Seemed like he did a good job with the Nunes memo…

Coleen Rowley: Yes. Whoever did the investigation – I doubt it was solely him – but yeah, they did a great job on that because controlling the press and everything. It’s sad though that it hasn’t reached a lot of the public after all this time. I think it’s important because between the call for transparency… The funny thing is Patel will be all for the whistleblowers of the FBI that you called me about before, the ones that were chagrined about all the stuff they had to do after January 6th. But now he’s going to be against anybody being a whistleblower if he abuses power? It’s always that way. But that call for transparency is key. That’s a test. Then the debunking of Russiagate, and how the FBI got so politicized. And then thirdly, the decentralization of the FBI, so that you take that power out of Washington, DC, where it’s so close to corruption and revolving doors.

MT: There’s one more thing that I wanted to ask about, because you mentioned it in a piece you sent to the New York Times about Comey before he was named Director. You talked about the tactic of trying to “incapacitate” suspects who can’t be prosecuted. This goes along with that issue of “disruption” or “discrediting.” Does the Bureau need to get back to making cases as opposed to these extrajudicial techniques? Can Patel do that?

Coleen Rowley: All that goes back to COINTELPRO.

MT: Right.

Coleen Rowley: One of the things I would hope for, which I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere, is that he could do something to reduce the entrapment-type cases that just burgeoned with Mueller. Talk about hypocrisy. He went to the ACLU and gave a speech about civil liberties. The whole ACLU stands up and applauds him, all while he is starting those entrapment cases. I was still in the FBI. I retired a year later, took my pension and left. I was like, oh, this is so wrong. They hired these con artist informants to infiltrate Muslim groups. There are books written about this now. [On a recent radio show] I said it’s possible that yes, maybe some of these tactics actually did prevent some nut from going further. You can’t say that isn’t true. On the other hand, the numbers here of cases that were based on the FBI telling vulnerable people, “Look, we can get you a bomb. We can get you this.” And then all of a sudden, when the guy looks like he’s going to press the button on it, that’s when they have the take-down.

It’s such a formula and you’re not accomplishing anything if you’re creating crime. We have so much crime in this country now. If I was Kash Patel, that’s what I would be saying. When they asked me those questions, I’d say, “We’ve got so much crime. It’s all over the country. Why can’t we have more agents out in the field working cases and trying to reduce the violence and the crime and the drug dealing, et cetera?” I think that would be a real winner politically for him to say.

MT: It sounds like you think it’s possible for him to fix some things. But we shouldn’t set ourselves up for disappointment.

Coleen Rowley: I’ve just gotten so cynical. I don’t put hope in anything or anybody anymore. Obama… even going way back, I don’t put hope out with anybody… But if he gets support on some of these things, the call for transparency, depoliticization and decentralization, there’s a chance.

MT: Let’s hope. Thank you!

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Crime

The Bureau Exclusive: The US Government Fentanyl Case Against China, Canada, Mexico

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Canadian federal police recently busted a massive fentanyl lab with evident links to Mexico and Chinese crime networks in British Columbia.

Canada increasingly exploited by China for fentanyl production and export, with over 350 gang networks operating, Canadian Security Intelligence Service reports

As the Trump Administration gears up to launch a comprehensive war on fentanyl trafficking, production, and money laundering, the United States is setting its sights on three nations it holds accountable: China, Mexico, and Canada. In an exclusive investigation, The Bureau delves into the U.S. government’s case, tracking the history of fentanyl networks infiltrating North America since the early 1990s, with over 350 organized crime groups now using Canada as a fentanyl production, transshipment, and export powerhouse linked to China, according to Canadian intelligence.

Drawing on documents and senior Drug Enforcement Administration sources—including a confidential brief from an enforcement and intelligence expert who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter—we unravel the evolution of this clandestine trade and its far-reaching implications, leading to the standoff that will ultimately pit President Donald Trump against China’s Xi Jinping.

In a post Tuesday morning that followed his stunning threat of 25 percent tariffs against Mexico and Canada, President Trump wrote:

“I have had many talks with China about the massive amounts of drugs, in particular fentanyl, being sent into the United States—but to no avail. Representatives of China told me that they would institute their maximum penalty, that of death, for any drug dealers caught doing this but, unfortunately, they never followed through, and drugs are pouring into our country, mostly through Mexico, at levels never seen before.”

While Trump’s announcements are harsh and jarring, the sentiment that China is either lacking motivation to crack down on profitable chemical precursor sales—or even intentionally leveraging fentanyl against North America—extends throughout Washington today.

And there is no debate on where the opioid overdose crisis originates.

At a November 8 symposium hosted by Georgetown University’s Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues, David Luckey, a defense researcher at RAND Corporation, said: “The production, distribution, and use of illegally manufactured fentanyl should be thought of as an ecosystem, and the People’s Republic of China is at the beginning of the global fentanyl supply chain.”

The Bureau’s sources come from the hardline geopolitical camp on this matter. They believe Beijing is attempting to destabilize the U.S. with fentanyl, in what is technically called hybrid warfare. They explained how Canada and Mexico support the networks emanating from China’s economy and political leadership. In Canada, the story is about financial and port infiltration and control of the money laundering networks Mexican cartels use to repatriate cash from fentanyl sales on American streets.

And this didn’t start with deadly synthetic opioids, either.

“Where the drugs come from dictates control. If marijuana is coming from Canada, then control lies there,” the source explained. “Some of the biggest black market marijuana organizations were Chinese organized crime groups based in Brooklyn and Flushing, Queens, supplied from Canada.

“You had organizations getting seven or eight tons of marijuana a week from Canada, all controlled by Chinese groups,” the source said. “And we have seen black market marijuana money flowing back into Canadian banks alongside fentanyl money.”

Canada’s legal framework currently contributes to its appeal for China-based criminal organizations. “Canada’s lenient laws make it an attractive market,” the expert explained. “If someone gets caught with a couple of kilos of fentanyl in Canada, the likelihood of facing a 25-year sentence is very low.”

The presence in Toronto and Vancouver of figures like Tse Chi Lop—a globally significant triad leader operating in Markham, Ontario, and with suspected links to Chinese Communist Party security networks—underscores the systemic gaps.

“Tse is a major player exploiting systemic gaps in Canadian intelligence and law enforcement collaboration,” the source asserted.

Tse Chi Lop was operating from Markham and locations across Asia prior to his arrest in the Netherlands and subsequent extradition to Australia. He is accused of being at the helm of a vast drug syndicate known as “The Company” or “Sam Gor,” which is alleged to have laundered billions of dollars through casinos, property investments, and front companies across the globe.

Reporting by The Bureau has found that British Columbia, and specifically Vancouver’s port, are critical transshipment and production hubs for Triad fentanyl producers and money launderers working in alignment with Mexican cartels and Iranian-state-linked criminals. Documents that surfaced in Ottawa’s Hogue Commission—mandated to investigate China’s interference in Canada’s recent federal elections—demonstrate that BC Premier David Eby flagged his government’s growing awareness of the national security threats related to fentanyl with Justin Trudeau’s former national security advisor.

A confidential federal document, released through access to information, states, according to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS): “Synthetic drugs are increasingly being produced in Canada using precursor chemicals largely sourced from China.”

“Preliminary reporting by the BC Coroner’s Service confirms that toxic, unregulated drugs claimed the lives of at least 2,511 people in British Columbia in 2023, the largest number of drug-related deaths ever reported to the agency,” the record says. “CSIS identifies more than 350 organized crime groups actively involved in the domestic illegal fentanyl market … which Premier Eby is particularly concerned about.”

A sanitized summary on Eby’s concerns from the Hogue Commission adds: “On fentanyl specifically, Canada, the United States, and Mexico are working on supply reduction, including as it relates to precursor chemicals and the prevention of commercial shipping exploitation. BC would be a critical partner in any supply reduction measures given that the Port of Vancouver is Canada’s largest port.”

But before Beijing’s chemical narcotics kingpins took over fentanyl money laundering networks from Canada, the story begins in the early 1990s when fentanyl first appeared on American streets, according to a source with full access to DEA investigative files.

The initial appearance of fentanyl in the United States was linked to a chemist in Ohio during 1992 or 1993, they said. This illicit operation led to hundreds of overdose deaths in cities like Chicago and New York, as heroin laced with fentanyl—known as “Tango & Cash”—flooded the streets. The DEA identified and dismantled the source, temporarily removing fentanyl from the illicit market.

Fentanyl seemed to vanish from the illicit market, lying dormant.

The mid-2000s saw a resurgence, this time with Mexican cartels entering the methamphetamine and fentanyl distribution game, and individuals of Chinese origin taking up roles in Mexico City. “One major case was Zhenli Ye Gon in 2007, where Mexican authorities seized $207 million from his home in Mexico City,” The Bureau’s source said. “He was a businessman accused of being involved in the trafficking of precursor chemicals for methamphetamine production.”

Ye Gon, born in Shanghai and running a pharma-company in Mexico, was believed to be perhaps the largest methamphetamine trafficker in the Western Hemisphere. Educated at an elite university in China, he made headlines not only for his alleged narcotics activities but also for his lavish lifestyle. While denying drug charges in the U.S., he claimed he had received duffel bags filled with cash from members of President Felipe Calderón’s party—a claim that was denied by officials. His arrest also caused a stir in Las Vegas, where Ye Gon was a “VIP” high roller who reportedly gambled more than $125 million, with the Venetian casino gifting him a Rolls-Royce.

Despite high-profile crackdowns, the threat of fentanyl ebbed and flowed, never truly disappearing.

Meanwhile, in 2005 and 2006, over a thousand deaths on Chicago’s South Side were traced to a fentanyl lab in Toluca, Mexico, operated by the Sinaloa Cartel. After the DEA shut it down, fentanyl essentially went dormant again.

A new chapter unfolded in 2013 as precursor chemicals—mainly N-phenethyl-4-piperidone (NPP) and 4-anilinopiperidine (4-ANPP)—began arriving from China. This is when fentanyl overdoses started to rise exponentially in Vancouver, where triads linked to Beijing command money laundering in North America.

“These chemicals were entering Southern California, Texas, and Arizona, smuggled south into Mexico, processed into fentanyl, and then brought back into the U.S., often mixed with Mexican heroin,” the U.S. government source explained.

At the time, a kilo of pure fentanyl cost about $3,000. By 2014, it was called “China White” because heroin was being laced with fentanyl, making it far more potent. In February 2015, the DEA issued its first national alert on fentanyl and began analyzing the role of Chinese organized crime in the fentanyl trade and related money laundering.

The profitability and efficiency of fentanyl compared to traditional narcotics like heroin made it an attractive commodity for drug cartels.

By 2016, fentanyl was being pressed into counterfeit pills, disguised as OxyContin, Percocet, or other legitimate pharmaceuticals. Dark web marketplaces and social media platforms became conduits for its distribution.

The merging of hardcore heroin users and “pill shoppers”—individuals seeking diverted pharmaceuticals—into a single user population occurred due to the prevalence of fentanyl-laced pills. This convergence signified a dangerous shift in the opioid crisis, broadening the scope of those at risk of overdose.

The profitability for traffickers was staggering. One pill could sell for $30 in New England, and Mexican cartels could make 250,000 pills from one kilo of fentanyl, which cost around $3,000 to $5,000. This was far more lucrative and efficient than heroin, which takes months to cultivate and process.

This shift marked a significant turning point in the global drug trade, with synthetic opioids overtaking traditional narcotics.

By 2016, entities linked to the Chinese state were entrenched in Mexico’s drug trade. Chinese companies were setting up operations in cartel-heavy cities, including mining companies, import-export businesses, and restaurants.

“The growth of Chinese influence in Mexico’s drug trade was undeniable,” the source asserted.

Recognizing the escalating crisis, the DEA launched Project Sleeping Giant in 2018. The initiative highlighted the role of Chinese organized crime, particularly the triads, in supplying precursor chemicals, laundering money for cartels, and trafficking black market marijuana.

“Most people don’t realize that Chinese organized crime has been upstream in the drug trade for decades,” the U.S. expert noted.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, drug trafficking organizations adapted swiftly. With borders closed and travel restricted, cartels started using express mail services like FedEx to ship fentanyl and methamphetamine.

This shift highlighted the cartels’ agility in exploiting vulnerabilities and adapting to global disruptions.

By 2022, the DEA intensified efforts to combat the fentanyl epidemic, initiating Operation Chem Kong to target Chinese chemical suppliers.

An often-overlooked aspect of the drug trade is the sophisticated money laundering operations that sustain it, fully integrated into China’s economy through triad money brokers. Chinese groups are now the largest money launderers in the U.S., outpacing even Colombian groups.

“We found Chinese networks picking up drug money in over 22 states,” the source explained. “They’d fly one-way to places like Georgia or Illinois, pick up cash, and drive it back to New York or the West Coast.”

Remarkably, these groups charged significantly lower fees than their Colombian counterparts, sometimes laundering money for free in exchange for access to U.S. dollars.

This strategy not only facilitated money laundering but also circumvented China’s strict currency controls, providing a dual benefit to the criminal organizations.

They used these drug-cash dollars to buy American goods, ship them to China, and resell them at massive markups. Chinese brokers weren’t just laundering fentanyl or meth money; they also laundered marijuana money and worked directly with triads. Operations like “Flush with Cash” in New York identified service providers moving over $1 billion annually to China.

But navigating the labyrinth of Chinese criminal organizations—and their connectivity with China’s economy and state actors—poses significant challenges for law enforcement.

“The challenge is the extreme compartmentalization in Chinese criminal groups,” the U.S. expert emphasized. “You might gain access to one part of the organization, but two levels up, everything is sealed off.”

High-level brokers operate multiple illicit enterprises simultaneously, making infiltration and dismantling exceedingly difficult.

The intricate tapestry of Chinese fentanyl trafficking highlights a convergence of international criminal enterprises exploiting systemic vulnerabilities across borders. The adaptability of these networks—in shifting trafficking methods, leveraging legal disparities, and innovating money laundering techniques—poses a formidable challenge to Western governments.

The leniency in certain jurisdictions including Canada not only hinders enforcement efforts but also incentivizes criminal activities by reducing risks and operational costs.

As the United States prepares to intensify its crackdown on fentanyl networks, having not only politicians and bureaucrats—but also the citizens they are serving—understand the importance of a multifaceted and multinational counter strategy is critical, because voters will drive the political will needed.

And this report, sourced from U.S. experts, provides a blueprint for other public interest journalists to follow.

“This briefing will help you paint the picture regarding Chinese organized crime, the triads, CCP, or PRC involvement with the drug trade and money laundering—particularly with precursor chemicals and black market marijuana,” the primary source explained.

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