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METRO VANCOUVER - Police expect charges will be laid here against the leader of the notorious United Nations gang and his associates after a massive two-year-probe, according to leading organized crime investigators and court documents.
Despite the U.S. arrest of gang boss Clayton Roueche, the Fraser Valley-based UN crime group continues its activities, Insp. Andy Richards of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit said Wednesday.
Roueche and his associates, numbering between 50 and 100, have been linked to a series of violent acts, including shootings across the Lower Mainland over the last year, said Sgt. Bill Whalen, who is overseeing the Canadian investigation.
The Vancouver Sun has confirmed it was UN gangsters who marked the Bacon brothers of Abbotsford for death in a plot so serious that police issued an extraordinary public safety warning on May 31, as the two youngest Bacons, Jarrod and Jamie, were arrested on outstanding gun charges.
Roueche was detained in custody Tuesday after U.S. prosecutors said the accused international drug trafficker was too dangerous to get bail.
They also argued that he was a major crime figure with the ability to flee the jurisdiction before his scheduled trial in August.
The Americans nabbed Roueche after an investigation that is several years old, but the CFSEU, a joint policing unit in British Columbia, will continue its investigation that started in September 2006, Whalen told The Sun.
"When the investigation is complete, the evidence is tallied and put forward. I think it is more of a chronological thing than an effectiveness thing," Whalen said in response to the fact that the American charges were laid first.
"Certainly from CFSEU's standpoint, Mr. Roueche being arrested in the States -- or really anywhere -- that takes him off the road at this time and out of the public, [which] we feel increases public safety. Obviously with the violence that has been ongoing in the Lower Mainland in the past year or so -- we suspect that the UN and Mr. Roueche have been involved in that -- certainly to have him out of the public right now is a good thing."
While Roueche was arrested on the U.S. indictment May 17, two of his UN associates who are also charged in the U.S. -- Dan Russell and Douglas Vanalstine -- remain in B.C., though the U.S. attorney's office has said it will apply to extradite them. Another key UN leader, Duane Meye, was gunned down in Abbotsford on May 8.
More details of the Canadian probe into the UN gang are contained in extensive U.S. court documents obtained by The Sun, including a letter from CFSEU's Inspector Richards.
"As a result of CFSEU-BC's ongoing investigation, serious criminal charges against Roueche will be proposed to Crown counsel in British Columbia for approval," Richards wrote in his May 22 letter.
"We have evidence to support that Roueche is a high-level drug trafficker involved in trafficking, producing, importing and exporting large quantities of a variety of illegal drugs, including marijuana, ecstasy, cocaine and methamphetamine and its precursor chemicals. Roueche has international drug trafficking connections with trusted associates in the U.S., Mexico and South America."
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