tagged w/ Drug Cartel
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More than 1,700 private offshore bank accounts belonging to Canadians turned up on a list of secret accounts in Switzerland, a joint CBC News/Globe and Mail investigation into possible tax evasion has found.
The Canadians on the list are part of a larger group that includes about 80,000 accounts belonging to HSBC Private Bank clients held in Geneva, according to whistleblower Herve Falciani.
Falciani, who obtained the list of accounts when he worked as head of computer security at HSBC, told the CBC Investigative Unit's Diana Swain in an exclusive interview that the offshore accounts are large, with a hefty minimum deposit.
Just to open an account, "you need at least $500,000," Falciani said.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/09/29/tax-account-hsbc.html#ixzz112TbfxvTMore than 1,700 private offshore bank accounts belonging to Canadians turned up on a... more
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In this scene from Vanguard's "Forest of Ecstasy," correspondent and executive producer Adam Yamaguchi accompanies Cambodian forest rangers on a mission to uncover illegal safrole oil factories in the Cardamom Mountains. Criminals take advantage of this remote rainforest to produce safrole oil, the raw ingredient used to make ecstasy, which is then sold worldwide. Adam comes along on the hunt to find and destroy these hidden camps.
"Vanguard," airing weekly on Current TV Wednesdays at 10/9c, is a no-limits documentary series whose award-winning correspondents put themselves in extraordinary situations to immerse viewers in global issues that have a large social significance. Unlike sound-bite driven reporting, the show's correspondents, Adam Yamaguchi, Kaj Larsen, Christof Putzel and Mariana van Zeller, serve as trusted guides who take viewers on in-depth real life adventures in pursuit of some of the world's most important stories.
For more, go to http://current.com/vanguard.In this scene from Vanguard's "Forest of Ecstasy," correspondent and... more
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The bloody drug wars ravaging Mexico took a bloody turn for the worse this week.
For the first time in the decades-old battle between drug gangs and the government, a car bomb was used to kill police.
Members of a drug gang in Ciudad Juarez Thursday baited federal officers and paramedics by dressing a wounded man in a police uniform and calling the cops to say an officer had been shot.
When the officers reached the decoy cop, the gang blew up a car holding more than 20 pounds of explosives.
The fake cop, a paramedic and a federal officer died in the blast.
The La Linea gang, which was blamed for the kidnapping and killing of a U.S. consulate employee and her husband back in March, detonated the bomb, police said.
Graffiti in Ciudad Juarez supposedly posted by the gang said they would strike again.
"We have more car bombs," they wrote.
The mayor of Ciudad Juarez said his city is on alert for more attacks.
"We've started changing all our protocols, to include bomb situations," Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz told the Associated Press.
The mayor also feared that the car bombing could trigger cops to quit or retire.
He said at least 14 police officers had been killed in the last few weeks.
Ciudad Juarez is on the Mexican border with Texas, right across from El Paso and is one of the most dangerous cities in the world, with more than 4,000 people killed since 2009, according to government estimates.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/07/17/2010-07-17_car_bomb_marks_new_bloody_phase_in_mexicos_war_with_drug_gangs.html#ixzz0tyKw9tOuThe bloody drug wars ravaging Mexico took a bloody turn for the worse this week.... more
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Jamaica’s Prime Minister Bruce Golding has denounced unrest in the capital city Kingston as a “calculated assault on the authority of the state”.
He vowed that criminals would not triumph, after supporters of an alleged druglord took to the streets to stop him from being arrested. One police station was set on fire and two others shot at by suspected supporters of Christopher “Dudus” Coke.
The authorities have declared a state of emergency in parts of Kingston. The trouble began late last week when the authorities announced they would arrest and extradite Mr Coke to the US.
His supporters set up barricades and said they would fight to protect him. The BBC’s Nick Davis in Montego Bay says the capital now represents a city under siege. Troops and police have come under fire, and smoke is rising from the burning police station.Jamaica’s Prime Minister Bruce Golding has denounced unrest in the capital city... more
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In the largest single strike at Mexican drug operations in the U.S., authorities arrested more than 300 people in a sting that demonstrates an upstart cartel's vast reach north of the border.In the largest single strike at Mexican drug operations in the U.S., authorities... more
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Gunmen broke into a drug rehabilitation center and shot 17 people dead in a northern Mexican border city, an official said.
The attackers on Wednesday broke down the door of El Aliviane center in Ciudad Juarez, lined up their victims against a wall and opened fire, said Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for the regional prosecutors' office. At least five people were injured.
Authorities had no immediate suspects or information on the victims. Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, is Mexico's most violent city, with at least 1,400 people killed this year alone. Most of the homicides are tied to drug gang violence.
Dozens of sobbing relatives rushed to the center to find out if their loved ones were among the dead. Soldiers and federal agents patrolled the streets surrounding the center in the Bellavista neighborhood.
President Felipe Calderon sent thousands more troops and federal police to Ciudad Juarez earlier this year, but the surge has done little to stem the raging violence. The city is home to the Juarez drug cartel, which is battling other gangs for trafficking and dealing turf.
The government is struggling to revamp Ciudad Juarez's police force, which is plagued by corruption and the assassination of many of its officers. Other police have quit the force out of fear of being targeted.
The massacre capped a particularly bloody day in Mexico's relentless drug war.
Gunmen killed the No. 2 security official and three other people in Calderon's home state of Michoacan, where the government is locked in an intensifying battle with the ruthless La Familia cartel, blamed for a string of assassinations of police and soldiers.
Jose Manuel Revuelta, who was promoted less than two weeks ago to state deputy public safety director, is the highest-ranking government official killed in the wave of assassinations sweeping Michoacan, the cradle of La Familia drug cartel.
Attackers drove up alongside Revuelta as he headed home and opened fire, state Attorney General Jesus Montejano said.
Revuelta tried to speed away, but only made it a few blocks before he was intercepted by two vehicles. Six gunmen got out and sprayed Revuelta's car with bullets, killing him, two bodyguards and a truck driver caught in the crossfire, Montejano said.
An AP reporter at the scene saw the bodies of Revuelta and his bodyguards in the car, which had at least 15 bullet holes in the front windshield. Soldiers and federal police rushed to the site - just three blocks from the headquarters of the Michoacan Public Safety Department - and a helicopter circled overhead.
Soldiers and federal police have intensified their fight against La Familia since accusing the cartel of killing 18 federal agents and two soldiers last month. In the worst attack, 12 federal agents were slain and their tortured bodies piled along a roadside as a warning.
It was the boldest cartel attack yet on Mexico's government. Authorities said say La Familia was retaliating for the arrest of one of its top members...
:(Gunmen broke into a drug rehabilitation center and shot 17 people dead in a northern... more
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Mormon pioneer Alma Dayer LeBaron had a vision when he moved his breakaway sect of polygamists to this valley 60 years ago: His many children would live in peace and prosperity among the pretty pecan orchards they would plant in the desert.
Prosperity has come, but the peace has been shattered.
In the past three months, American Mormon communities in Mexico have been sucked into a dust devil of violence sweeping the borderlands. Their relative wealth has made them targets: Their telephones ring with threats of extortion. Their children and elders are taken by kidnappers. They have been drawn into the government's war with the drug cartels.
This month, a leader of their colony was abducted by heavily armed men dressed as police, then beaten and shot dead 10 minutes from town. Benjamin LeBaron, 31, whom everyone called Benji, had dared to denounce the criminals, while refusing to pay a $1 million ransom demanded by kidnappers who had grabbed his teenage brother from a family ranch in May.
Amid the blood and mesquite at the site of his last breath, Benjamin LeBaron's killers posted a sign that read: "This is for the leaders of LeBaron who didn't believe and who still don't believe."
"We're living in a war zone, but it's a war zone with little kids running all around in the yard," said Julian LeBaron, a brother of the slain leader. Like most members of the Mormon enclave, he has dual Mexican-American citizenship and speaks Spanish and English fluently.
more at link....Mormon pioneer Alma Dayer LeBaron had a vision when he moved his breakaway sect of... more
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Reporting from Mexico City -- Mexican authorities on Thursday announced the capture of Vicente Carrillo Leyva, a suspected top leader of a family-run drug gang based in Ciudad Juarez and one of the country's most wanted figures.
Federal law enforcement officials said Carrillo Leyva, the 32-year-old son of deceased drug kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes, was arrested Wednesday while exercising in a wealthy neighborhood of Mexico City.
The younger Carrillo was listed among the country's 24 most wanted drug suspects last week when the federal government offered $2-million rewards for each. Authorities described him as an heir to the organization once led by his father, who was known as the "Lord of the Skies" for his use of aircraft to move drugs.Reporting from Mexico City -- Mexican authorities on Thursday announced the capture of... more
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