Cartels scrambling for precursors

Mexican cartels are reliant on Chinese companies to get precursors. This is so because China is the cheapest source. The two most common fentanyl precursors are NPP and 4-ANPP. Huge amounts of these components were traced to a state-subsidized company in Wuhan that shut down after the outbreak.

A Yuancheng salesman in 2017. “Below 10 kilograms is express delivery, above 10 kilograms by air”

Advertised prices across China for precursors of fentanyl, methamphetamine and cutting agents have risen between 25% and 400% in months. The pandemic has led to a shortage of workers at labs in China which produces more than 80% of precursor chemicals such as benzylfentanyl, norfentanyl and 4-anilinopiperidine. The bulk of the meth and synthetic opioids clandestinely produced in Mexico is controlled by the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Fentanyl has become the most coveted cartel commodity in recent weeks.

See ----->Sinaloa Cartel - Coronavirus bad for business

Mohammed Hakimzadah pulls 9 years in murder-for-hire

Mohammed Hakimzadah thought he was hiring a Quebec Hells Angels associate to murder his wife and her lawyer. The hitman was an undercover Toronto cop. “He wanted his wife tortured, to suffer because he spent seven days in custody for assaulting his daughter. “Hakimzadah wanted the lawyer murdered in spectacular fashion ..."

Hakimzadah made headlines in 2014 when he claimed a female taxi passenger sexually assaulted him over a $14 fare. “She lifted up her top and showed me her breasts and I said, ‘I’m not interested,’” he recalled.

The judge said Hakimzadah is a misogynist who targeted his wife, her female lawyer and his daughters.

'City of Lougheed' - By Mexicans for Gringos

The 'City of Lougheed' is a large $1.2b project at Lougheed Mall in Burnaby. Developer is Shape Properties and contractor is ITC. So whats my problem? I walked by the project on April 24th (along North Road) and witnessed a large crew (20) of form labourers. ALL spoke Spanish. ALL.

doug.mcfarlane@itc-group.com

Doug MacFarlane is the President and CEO of ITC Construction Group. The 'City of Lougheed' will have 23+ high rise towers and over 300 stores.NOT photos of 'City of Lougheed' workers.

info@shapeproperties.com

Today, April 27 around 11:00a I witnessed 5 young female traffic flaggers on duty around the site. All could have been Spanish. I passed two young (under 30) women and they were speaking Spanish to each other. Brad Stokes, longtime chief retard at Shape Properties not only can't find male unskilled construction labour in Canada, but he can't possibly find female unskilled labour either? Sir, from the heart, fuk you.

Brad Stokes - COO Shape Properties since Oct 2005. stokes@shapeproperties.com

Chicago Mob Boss D'Amico goes to big house in the sky

Chicago mob boss Marco D'Amico was seemingly dogged by a bad mugshot depicting him with coke bottle glasses and a pair of googling eyeballs. Despite appearances, Outfit history will record D'Amico as far from an underworld dork, and he had near perfect vision.

His nickname was 'the Mover' and reflected his skills at getting Mob work done. D'Amico died last week, age 84. As consigliere, he was the No. 3-ranking man of the Outfit.

Instafamous Zinger avoids jail on cocaine charges

Glamorous Instagram model Vera Zinger, 23, who moonlighted as a cocaine dealer while flaunting her luxurious lifestyle online has avoided jail. Days after her arrest Zinger shared photos of herself walking up the stairs to the posh Bronte baths in Sydney for a swimwear photo shoot. She was sentenced to a 13-month intensive corrections order and best behave herself or it's off to the big cat house.

A suspicious pug was taken into custody as a possible gang member associate but beat charges. Ms. Zinger had the good fortune to get herself pregnant, likely swaying the judge at sentencing.

13 dead after clashes in Guerrero

Led by Isaac Navarette Celis, the cartel is known for China White and virtually enslaving small towns for the production of heroin.

An extended gun battle in the mountains of Guerrero was between community vigilantes, soldiers and the Cartel del Sur. El Naranjo is an agricultural town where poppies are grown for opium gum and heroin. The Cartel del Sur’s hold on the region is brutal.

The Cartel del Sur is known for its brutality, including torturing and executing prisoners. On the other side is the United Front of Community Police of Guerrero State (FUPCEG), a grassroots citizens militia of 11,700 fighters who patrol 39 municipalities in Guerrero. In the middle is the ineffective military and police, many of whom are bribed by the cartel.

Portugal Hells Angels face music - Mário Machado

In March 2018, between 30 and 40 members of the Portugal Hells Angels attacked a rival group of Bandidos at a restaurant in Prior Velho, on the outskirts of Lisbon. Six people were injured, two seriously. The main target was Mário Machado, who escaped unscathed. The restaurant was destroyed.

Mário Machado was leader of the Hammerskins group - a radical and violent wing of the skinhead movement. He was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison for extortion. Before that he had been sentenced to ten years in prison. The Hammerskin Nation is the most violent and best-organized neo-Nazi skinhead group in America. Mário Machado said he had "850 militants and supporters." The two groups are at war and have been for years. At stake is control of the drug trade.

'Parasite' with cocaine found attached to ship’s hull in Guatemala

A steel construction was found attached to the hull of general cargo ship UBC SAIKI in Guatemala. The pod, known as a 'parasite' contained 150 kg of cocaine. The ship arrived at Santo Tomas anchorage on Apr 17 from Santa Marta, Colombia.

Fuminho arrested in Mozambique

Gilberto Aparecido dos Santos, aka 'Fuminho,' had been on the run for more than 20 years after escaping from a Brazilian prison until his capture in a luxury hotel in Maputo on April 14. Brazilian media reported that dos Santos left Mozambique in a Brazilian Air Force plane bound for Brazil. Dos Santos was one of the First Capital Command (PCC) gang’s most important cocaine brokers and crucial to its international business. The PCC is the largest criminal organization in Brazil, with a membership of 20,000, 6,000 of whom are in prison.

Samir Chowieri - Canada's been good

Cops and CRA have targeted Samir Chowieri multiple times on suspicion of money laundering.

Samir Chowieri is president of the group that owns the CHSLD Herron (31 have died) along with 6 other retirement homes in Quebec, all of which are embroiled in Covid-19. He was convicted in the 1980s of conspiracy for drug trafficking and fraud. In 2012 Chowieri was implicated by wiretaps recorded by police during Project Colisée, an operation that decimated the Montreal mafia.

Place Vincent-Massey. The federal government leases 98.9% of the building.

A numbered company ended up with Place Vincent-Massey after a complicated deal for $1 in July 2006. The seller was Entreprises Duroc Inc., owned by Guy Marc-Aurèle, a friend and fixer for Vito Rizzuto. Marc-Aurèle acted as a key front man for Rizzuto, his son, and murdered developer Tony Magi.

Tony Magi - murdered in 2019.

37 years after his immigration to Canada "with $2,000 in his pocket" Samir Chowieri and the Katasa Group owns residential properties in Ottawa, Montreal and Sept-Îles, as well as two commercial buildings in Gatineau.

See ----->https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/world/canada/montreal-nursing-homes-coronavirus.html

Oz HA sergeant-at-arms, Meth dealer, Phillip O'Shea can't catch a break

Hells Angels Phillip O'Shea had another appearance in front of a judge and the result is another 6 months in the big house. O'Shea will be 'on ice' until mid-2021.

HA heavyweight Phillip O'Shea has been in jail since January and will be eligible for release in October on trafficking charges. O'Shea unsuccessfully sued Northern Territory police in 2018 over his violent arrest in a separate case.

O'Shea was found guilty on the drug charges, as well as assaulting police.

Gold the Ferrari of money laundering - Peter Ferrari

NTR Metals is the largest money-laundering prosecution involving precious metals in U.S. history. “The scope of the conspiracy is enormous,” prosecutors told a judge during a hearing in Miami in 2017. Federal prosecutors charged 3 NTR traders with money laundering, saying the three men bought $3.6 billion of illegal gold from criminal groups in Latin America. The scandal shut down NTR and cost its Dallas-based parent company, Elemetal, the ability to trade gold on bullion and commodity exchanges.

Prosecutors claimed the gold traders, who eventually pleaded guilty, fueled “illegal gold mining, foreign bribery [and] narcotics trafficking.”

Pedro Pérez Miranda - Peter Ferrari

In 2012, the company did little business in Latin America. But the next year, NTR struck a rich vein, becoming the largest U.S. importer of Peruvian gold with $980m worth of deals. They did it with help from Peruvian businessman Pedro Pérez Miranda, who is suspected of laundering massive amounts of drug money through the gold trade. Over the past two decades, as the U.S. war on drugs undercut the cash flow of narco-traffickers, dealers diversified into Latin America’s gold industry. By using drug profits to mine and sell gold, criminals can launder staggering amounts of money.

In 2013, NTR went on to buy $400 million in gold from Ferrari

NTR’s Peruvian operations collapsed at the end of 2013 when police raided a storage facility outside Lima holding gold that belonged to Ferrari and others. Agents seized $18.8m worth of gold. But the party wasn’t over — it moved. In 2014, NTR was smuggling gold across the border to Ecuador and Bolivia.

Illegal mining has devastated the rainforests of Colombia, Peru, and other gold-producing nations.

When local governments in those countries also began cracking down the party moved again, this time to Colombia. In 2015, NTR’s imports from Colombia soared to $722m. That accounted for more than half of the country’s gold exports to the US. Colombia exported 64 tons of gold in 2016, much of it to the United States. That same year, Colombia’s large-scale, legal mining operations produced only eight tons. A large part of the gap between what Colombia’s big mines produce and what the country exports is unlicensed and untaxed gold — often unearthed at any cost by operations controlled by narcos.

Cartel associates pose as traders to buy and mine gold. Cocaine profits are seed money. They sell the metal through front companies to refineries. Once the deal is made, the cartels have turned their dirty gold into clean cash. To the outside world, they’re not drug dealers; they’re gold traders.