Sam Cooper - Wilful Blindness

One of the more useful methodologies in investigative journalism can be reduced to a simple maxim: follow the money. Journalists who undertake difficult and dangerous assignments of the type Sam has pursued in this book will sooner or later encounter an encumbrance to the purpose of revealing the truth that emerges from the work of uncovering facts, and its this. Among the political vices, the thing about corruption is that the more widespread it is, and the higher up it goes in the political establishment, the less people want to talk about it.

This book is a testament to Sams persistence and determination to follow the money - hundreds of millions of dollars in dirty drug money, trunkloads of $20 bills carried into casinos in hockey bags, money laundered from China by Beijings whale gambler princelings and their back-alley go-betweens in Metro Vancouver. Its about the Canadian politicians who saw benefits in a seedy underground industry that outweighed whatever harm they noticed in sky-high real estate prices and the corpse heaps of dead fentanyl users.

Its a shocking story, told by a brave reporter who has forced a public conversation about corruption in Canada, how widespread it has become and how high up in the political establishment it has spread. Its also a ripping yarn.

Terry Glavin, National Post

Wilful Blindness reveals how Vancouver has become a global springboard for China into the worlds most lucrative drug markets, including New York, Miami, Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. These markets are supplied by not only Vancouver, but Richmond, Calgary, Winnipeg, and thousands of mini-drug labs in homes along the border of the US that are mixing illicit chemicals into pills for onward sale.

Tens of thousands of people die in these cities every year, from drug overdoses of illegal fentanyl, opium, heroin, ecstasy, and methamphetamines imported from Burma, through Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Macau, Hong Kong, and China, by violent Triad gangs like the Big Circle Boys, Shui Fong, and 14K. The Triad gangs were started in the 17th century in China, and have fanned out globally, using a willing or unwilling Chinese diaspora, as the water in which they swim.

Anders Corr, PHD, Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

The transnational organized criminal networks are flourishing in Canada and elsewhere. With archaic legal systems, political indifference, and absent national strategy with siloed structures and systems, nations will continue to wake up to more dead kids, corrupt politicians and the rise of this 21st Centurys most significant national and global security threat.

Vancouver and the rest of Canada have been a convergence zone for Chinese, Middle Eastern, Mexican and Columbian Cartels for well over a decade as they sell and export their drugs, make their money and finance their related operations within Canada and the U.S.

Money laundering is merely a symptom of their crime and nefarious activities; the dirty money will find the cracks in the system just as water finds on all surfaces.

Sam Cooper has done what security officials have been hesitant to share until recently, Canada is a haven for nefarious national security and transnational organized crime networks, and our democracy is at risk.

Calvin Chrustie
Former officer in charge of major projects federal policing, RCMP, BC, Senior Advisor and Consultant, The Critical Risk Team

This book reads like a thriller, and is stranger than fiction. Gripping, racy and exciting, it is difficult to put down. A tale of gambling, narcotics, tycoons, criminal gangs and Communists. And the shocking part is that its not a novel, it is all true. Based on meticulous research, this aptly titled book exposes the naivety and corruption at the heart of western democracies which for too long have kowtowed to the Chinese Communist Party regime and their crime syndicates and as a result put the free world in jeopardy. This book is a wake-up call, and a must-read.

Benedict Rogers, co-founder and Chief Executive of Hong Kong Watch