I’ve written before on the story of how a Vancouver public company’s main source of revenues was supplying the precursor drug which allowed Mexican drug cartels to cook crystal meth in underground factories in California, which started the crystal meth epidemic across the United States, and caused countless untimely deaths.
As of 2021, 52,400 Americans had died from meth-related deaths.
Our Vancouver anti-hero, Dr. Death, the person who opened the door for crystal meth mass production for cartels, and its resultant mass deaths, sleeps like a baby in one of several mansions in Vancouver and one in Morocco.
I am told that he once had a sleepless night – the RCMP raided one of his mansions many years ago early one morning. Dr. Death and his wife, I am told, were highly irritated by the RCMP because a mansion was messed up; cushions were thrown around; drawers opened; papers looked at; trinkets from the homeland in Iran were touched.
The Middle Eastern group involved in moving the supply of precursors from Dr. Death was sending the money earned directly to the Hezbollah.
I knew there was a Middle Eastern terrorist organization benefiting financially from what little there is on the cases in the US court files (they are filed under seal as terrorism cases) but the Vancouver part of the case appears in a financial crime book published by a New York author. I called him, and according to him, it is the Hezbollah who was involved.
Hezbollah is a terrorist organization tied to Iran and Lebanon. Its leader is Hassan Nasrallah. Dr. Death is Iranian. You probably guessed that.
Seems odd – terrorist financing was going on in Canada for Hezbollah using the capital markets, and the end result is that the precursor kingpin accumulates mansions, and moves to other public companies, raising more money to cure cancer. Or is it Covid-19? I’ll have to go back and check what the Hezbollah’s Vancouver securities lawyer wrote this month in Dr. Death’s public company’s investor material.
In a million years, I never thought American authorities would allow a Vancouver capital markets guy who helped create the crystal meth epidemic, devastating their people, to keep going in the capital markets, becoming richer by taking even more from Americans by way of their investment capital in his public companies. I was wrong.
I also never thought that you could be tied to financing the Hezbollah and be allowed to run a public company and raise capital from Americans. I was wrong there too.
Let’s switch focus some 4,000 kilometers away to Uganda and Sudan.
On the border of Uganda and Sudan is a terrorist organization called Lord’s Resistance Army (“LRA”).
The LRA has been labelled one of the “most brutal rebel groups,” frequently abducting young children whom it forces into sexual slavery.
The LRA forced an estimated 66,000 children to fight for them, and caused the displacement of over 2,000,000 people.
The leader of the LRA was a man named Joseph Kony.
Joseph Kony has disappeared.
The LRA’s number 2 man, and its chairman and financier was a man named Ladit Balgara.
Ladit Balgara lived in a 10-bedroom mansion in Banstead, England.
In 1998, Balgara was arrested by the UK federal police pursuant to an extradition request from the United States in connection with money laundering charges against him and several others.
He and a British man named Ian Burns were accused of taking millions of dollars from an American municipality which was wired to the Canary Islands, then to Citibank in Spain in an account held by an entity named Lomoro Securities Inc. After that, the money disappeared into the hands of the LRA.
The mysterious Ian Burns lived in Barcelona at the time. He has never been found and is a US fugitive, although it is possible that he is living right in front of us, active in the Canadian capital markets like Dr. Death, denying that he is that Ian Burns.
He could be anywhere – Jersey, Russia, Spain.
Or Vancouver.
Lomoro Securities appears to have been a fictional company although there is now a Lomoro Securities incorporated in the UK operated by Balgara that post-dates these events.
One of the other accused in the case was a man named Gabriel McEnroe, who was tied to the Trafficante Mafia in West Palm Beach, Florida.
In its earlier days, the Trafficante family was recruited by the CIA in West Palm Beach to assassinate Fidel Castro (as described in the book “Mafia Spies: The Inside Story of the CIA, Gangsters, JFK, and Castro”). The plan was foiled because, on the 11th hour, it turns out that the Trafficante boys ended up being pro-Castro. The book describes how a few of those boys were then killed.
McEnroe was apparently a spy too – he disclosed that he was a casual agent for the US government, and provided intel to various agencies about activities in Russia.
In Russia, he worked on oil and gas deals for third parties, similar to Ladit Balgara.
Allegedly, McEnroe had ties to President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg, Russia, when Putin was a deputy mayor. Whether that is true or not seems debatable because he would be arrested if he was disclosing that he was providing intel on Russia to the US, while in Russia.
During the time that McEnroe was in St. Petersburg, Russian organized crime was consolidating around key crime leaders who would come to dominate much of commerce in Russia providing so-called “roofing” services. Foreigners and local business people had to work with Russian organized crime to conduct business in Russia.
An exception was George Cohen, the Canadian who brought the McDonald’s restaurants to Russia, whom I knew from thoroughbred horse country in Ontario and the Woodbine racetrack. When he encountered difficulties in Russia, he sought the assistance of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
If McEnroe was in Russia doing business at that time, he would have had to have Russian organized crime ties.
It isn’t clear how they all worked together – Burns and Balgara were tied through Lomoro Securities, and Burns was in control of the bank account in Spain used for the LRA. But how McEnroe and the Trafficante Mafia were tied to Ian Burns, Ladit Balgara and the LRA back then is a mystery.
When Balgara was arrested, the UK police issued a news release stating that Ladit Balgara was using the name Powell Onen P’Ojwang in the UK.
He is also a/k/a Paul Onen. I believe he is also a/k/a Powell Cotton, an alleged film director.
In 2002, the US government announced it was dropping charges against Balgara because Balgara told prosecutors that he had “full blown AIDS” and not many more years to live.
Turns out he’s fine, back living in a mansion, and brokering oil and gas deals.
In May 2009, a US government Wikileaks cable stated that Balgara was pursuing destabilizing southern Sudan, and was close to then Sudanese president Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir.
Then in 2011, Ladit Balgara incorporated a company called Global Partners Invest Limited, with a Vancouver man named Mohammed Janif. For what purpose seems unknown. How an African terrorist organization leader formed ties to Vancouver is also unknown.
Balgara’s partner, Sudanese former president al-Bashir, mysteriously disappeared from a Sudanese jail a few weeks ago. Like Joseph Kony. Like Ian Burns.
Al-Bashir could be anywhere – Uganda, London, West Palm Beach.
Or Vancouver.
Some people in the former intel community whom I spoke to about this, believe that a character in the case of Dr. Death and the Hezbollah, and a character in the case of the Lord’s Resistance Army, years later, came to cross-over through the same public company investment scheme.
So, actors from two terrorist groups converging.
Where, you ask?
But why ask – we know the answer – in Vancouver.