Kahnawake clarifies erroneous media reports of the SQ MYGALE raids

by Kahnawake TV, Youtube, March 31, 2016

In what it called the largest raid of its kind in America, Quebec provincial police carried out Operation MYGALE aimed at dismantling what they called a drug, tobacco and money laundering ring on Wednesday, March 30th that had roots in Quebec and reached as far as South America and Europe. Social media lit up when the SQ reported they had carried out searches and made arrests on the Territory… a statement which turned out to be hugely erroneous. We spoke with Chief Peacekeeper Dwayne Zacharie and Tobacco portfolio chief Gina Deer for details.

 

SQ targets contraband tobacco, money laundering in raids

Sûreté du Québec, RCMP and Canada Border Services agents carry boxes from a house in Sainte-Marthe-sur-le-Lac, north of Montreal, March 30, 2016, as part of an operation against tobacco smuggling. Phil Carpenter / Montreal Gazette

Massive operation involves drug trafficking, money laundering and contraband tobacco

By Kalina Laframboise, CBC News, March 30, 2016

The Sûreté du Québec have arrested 60 people and carried out 70 raids across Quebec as part of a massive police operation targeting contraband tobacco, drug trafficking and money laundering at an international level.

Police tobacco raids in Akwesasne and Kahnawake

Tobacco store in Kahnawake, Mohawk Territory.

Weapons found in home of Akwesasne man and strip club owner caught in SQ tobacco operation

By Jorge Barrera, APTN National News, May 1, 2014
Mohawk police officers uncovered a cache of weapons Wednesday inside the home of an Akwesasne man whose strip club was allegedly used to store North Carolina-grown raw tobacco after it was smuggled into Canada by an Italian Mafia-run network, APTN National News has learned.

RCMP Spending Nearly $100 Million to Spy on Mohawk Tobacco Trade

By Muna Mire, Vice, March 26 2014

The same Conservative government that dismissed a federal inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women as too costly, has allocated $91.7 million over five years in its budget for a high-tech surveillance operation along the Quebec-Ontario border with the US in order to find and shut down Mohawk-run underground tobacco operations. The funds were set aside specifically for a “Geospatial Intelligence and Automatic Dispatch Centre,” which will rely on a number of different and costly surveillance technologies.

Ottawa giving RCMP cash for high-tech surveillance targeting Mohawk tobacco trade

Tobacco store in Kahnawake, Mohawk Territory.

APTN National News, Feb 11, 2014
OTTAWA–The federal government is continuing its battle against the underground Mohawk tobacco trade by giving the RCMP new high-tech border surveillance tools, according to the federal budget unveiled Tuesday.