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Dec 31,2006 - Jan7,2006 |
The Dragon’s fire
Part 18 - The Chinese Triads are digging their claws into Canadian businesses
By Antonio Nicaso
Originally Published: 2001-06-24
We only know that they exist." John Glenn, of Newmarket’s RCMP, does not hide his concern when he talks about the Triads in Canada. "For some years we’ve had to wind down any investigation on these organizations in order to concentrate on other fronts. In short, we lost contact."
Yet the Dragon’s claws have been slashing for a long time. Like other crime syndicates, the Chinese Mafia was born in the remote past. Yellowed chronicles state that the first Triad was founded in 1674 by a group of Buddhist monks from the Fukien monastery in order to topple the Manchu dynasty. The symbol of this sect is an equilateral triangle whose sides stand for three basic Chinese concepts: Heaven, Earth and Man.
More flexible than the Italian Mafia and much wiser than the Colombian cartels, the Asian gangs represent the new frontier of organized crime. Recently, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno defined them as a priority in the fight against organized crime in the United States.
The situation in Canada is not much different. "Vancouver has become a fifth column of the Dragon," admits Thomas Ritchie, one of B.C.’s leading men in the fight against the mob. The Triads aren’t the only ones operating in Vancouver, but also the Big Circle Boys, an organization of the former Red Guards founded during the Maoist period. "The Big Circle Boys go back and forth between Canada and the U.S.," says Ritchie. "The problem of the Asian gangs has become a big one."
In addition to the Triads (Kung Lok, 14K, Sun Yee On) and the Big Circle Boys, there have been reports of the presence in Canada of Vietnamese, Korean, Laotian and Cambodian groups. "These minor groups often supply the soldiers to the Triads and the Big Circle Boys, the more important syndicates," says Glenn.
The Chinese bosses do not lack personnel. A recent report by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service states that the two main Triad groups, Sun Yee On and 14K, alone can count on an army of 80,000 members all over the world. The return of Hong Kong under Peking sovereignty has forced the Triads to establish bridgeheads in calmer cities where large Asian colonies were present. This was the case in the four Dragon cities (Manchester, Perth, Vancouver and San Francisco) or even in some European capitals, such as Budapest and Vienna where the Triads deal in the restaurant extortion racket and low-cost labour.
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