Hundreds of airline employees suspected of smuggling drugs and people, report says
COLIN FREEZE AND TU THANH HA
December 11, 2008
Canada's airport security has been compromised by hundreds of workers who have used their security clearances to smuggle drugs and people into the country, according to a new police report.
Project Spawn, a two-year RCMP inquiry into hundreds of police investigations at Canada's eight largest airports, has identified nearly 60 active gangs infiltrating airports, concentrating on Toronto's Pearson International Airport, Montreal's Trudeau International Airport and Vancouver International Airport.
The Globe and Mail has obtained a 22-page declassified summary of the Project Spawn conclusions, which show the Mounties reviewed files from 2005 to 2007 and concluded that hundreds of people were suspected of involvement in smuggling during that time - 298 of whom were current or former airline employees.
Not all the cases culminated in charges and convictions.
The report says that federal laws prevent federal agencies from sharing information about such chases that would allow better screening of airport employees.
Project Spawn was completed in the spring, and its findings were released by the RCMP to Senator Colin Kenny this month.
The senator said the conclusions buttress those made by the national-security committee he chairs, and are likely to soon be reiterated by a federal commission of inquiry report on the 1985 Air India terrorist bombings that killed more than 330 people.
"Where you have fertile ground for organized crime, you also have fertile ground for terrorists," Mr. Kenny said.
The Mounties "have come up with very significant numbers of people who meet the definition of organized crime within the airports," he said, adding, "It's significant these people are able to operate with impunity."
The senator then expressed a harsh criticism of Transport Canada, which he argues should inspect airport workers on their way into and out of work. "There's no question the police involved feel that this could be shut down, and shut down firmly, if Transport Canada got off its ass."
A spokeswoman for Transport Canada, Nicole McNeely, said last night that it has reviewed the report and is "developing a comprehensive response to the issues raised."
Significant busts in Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg during the study period appear to have helped winnow the ranks of problematic employees, along with high turnover. Even so, the RCMP says 68 of the problem employees were still working at airports at the conclusion of the study.
A criminal record doesn't preclude getting an airport job, and the RCMP says a "lack or resources" and "technological impediments" frustrate screening processes. The Project Spawn summary says laws prevent the Canada Border Service Agency and Transport Canada from fully sharing employee information with police.
Apart from corrupt airport workers - a small percentage of 88,000 people who work in Canada's airports - the Mounties flagged another thousand outsiders as individuals intent on "infiltrating the airports to facilitate criminal activity."
These are allegedly agents of 58 crime groups, who police say work at "corrupting existing employees or by placing criminal associates into the airport work force." Some crime gangs are said to plant spouses and relatives, whereas others have their members get hired for airport jobs.
Project Spawn reveals the drug most frequently imported illegally to Canada is khat -a leafy East African plant with narcotic qualities. Usually, it comes from Britain, where it's legal. More troubling were dozens of conspiracies to import cocaine, usually from the Caribbean, and often arriving in Vancouver. Toronto was the most popular destination for heroin, usually from Latin America.
Canadian courts have revealed some of the finer details of smuggling schemes. A groundbreaking 2006 crackdown against mobsters associated with the Rizzuto crime family revealed the extent that the Mafia had infiltrated Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport using airline employees, a catering company and baggage handlers to import cocaine.
A 400-page RCMP affidavit filed in court revealed the gang relied on a corrupt customs agent. Usually, passengers arriving from overseas fill in a declaration card and pass through a primary inspection line, where a customs agent stamps the form. Depending on the stamp, some passengers submit to luggage inspection.
But drug traffickers got a supply of pre-stamped declaration cards from a corrupt agent that enabled their cocaine couriers to avoid inspection.
The Montreal file even shows that during a debt dispute between rival Quebec gangs, the RCMP secretly recorded mobsters musing about buying $400 plane tickets so they could have a conciliatory get-together in a departure lounge.
The reasoning was it would be a safe spot, as everyone had to pass through airport security checks. Members of the Rizzuto crime family plead guilty to a variety of conspiracies this fall.
Why am I not surprised?
... tsk, tsk 
Last night on the national news the reporter said that people were being smuggled. That leads me to believe that international cargo flights should be receiving more scrutiny.
