A criminal gang was inundating the United States of pot québec

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The police seized 416 kilograms of pot, 25 kilograms of cocaine, and $ 2.8 million in cash in this investigation. Each week, for four years, the network has exported between 20 and 40 pockets of hockey filled with marijuana in quebec on american soil.

Éric Thibault

Friday, 19 January 2018 01:00

UPDATE
Friday, 19 January 2018 01:00

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A Montreal that would have helped a bold network of smugglers to export to a billion $ in the pot quebecers will have to go to explain himself before the american justice.

Leslie Grant comes to learn that the judgment in Jordan, made by the supreme Court to reduce the court delays in Canada, “may not apply in the context of an extradition request” as the one for which he has been subjected since his arrest in 2014.

In making this decision last week, the justice Guy Cournoyer ordered the incarceration of the man of 38 years until he is escorted to Albany, in the State of New York, where he could face up to 20 years in prison.

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“Sieve of iron “

Grant, who lived in Pierrefonds, was one of the last targets of the operation “iron Curtain” of the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), which has led to a fortnight of Quebec in u.s. courts.

Those have all been accused of having transported the drugs or the money for a criminal organization that has flooded the East coast of the u.s. of massive amounts of ” Quebec Gold “, between 2006 and 2009.

Obviously, the “iron Curtain” at the border was rather like a colander. Each week, this network was to spend between 500 and 900 kg of marijuana in canada, in the north of the United States, for a potential revenue of a billion dollars over four years, according to documents of the court in which The Journal has obtained a copy.

The drug was concealed in pockets hockey transported by convoys of trucks or snowmobiles. They cross often the border by the mohawk reserve of Akwesasne.

Cocaine in the opposite direction

Drivers that sense they were ahead of the procession with nothing to carry were responsible to warn their accomplices by radio when they saw patrolmen or to do it on purpose for the police intercept, so that the smugglers have the free way.

Paid barely $ 1000 of the trip, the “haul” quebec would also collect the traffickers americans on the part of their employers on the sale of pot in New York and Boston.

A portion of this money was reinvested “each week” to order to associated with california’s network of “dozens of kilograms of cocaine” bound for Montreal.

In addition to having transported the husband, Grant would have reported 182 000 $ in dirty money and 25 kg of cocaine in Quebec, according to witnesses, collaborators of the prosecution.

The strikes of the DEA, however, seem to have sown discord within this small clandestine of the pot.

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Leslie Grant

Accused

A DEA agent alleged that in the spring of 2012, Leslie Grant, it would have admitted to having fired in the direction of the alleged “number 2” in the network, Mihale Leventis.

“He believed that “Rookie” [nickname of Leventis] had the contract to kill him at the request of a member of the underworld irish “, supported in writing by the agent Michael Norian.

Contract murder

According to the SPVM, Leventis has escaped a murder attempt in the restaurant Cavalli on Peel street, on November 9, 2011. Grant has denied those allegations before the judge Cournoyer. Held in Montreal, Leventis challenged his extradition before the Court of appeal.

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Jeffrey Colegrove

Inmate

The DEA alleged that the leader of the network would be the Montreal-Jeffrey Colegrove, it combines the underworld irish. Colegrove is not accused of, nor endorsed by these extradition proceedings. He is serving a sentence of 12 years in penitentiary for possession of a kilo of cocaine in Montreal.

►An investigation of the Journal, published in February 2015, has established that the fugitive Elizabeth Cross, aged 32, who was murdered by gunfire in Lachine, in the spring of 2014, was connected to this organization. His murderer still on the run.

Operation iron Curtain

• The network would have to pass in the United States between 450 and 900 kg of pot use in quebec per week, from 2006 to 2009, or up to 180 metric tonnes in four years.
• The price for their pound of pot ranged between 2300 and $ 3700 $, the annual revenue potential of $300 million.
• The leader of the “haul” of the network, Steven Sarti of Brossard, who was 23 years old when arrested in 2009, was sentenced to 64 months ‘ imprisonment.