A newly unveiled report confirms close ties between a crooked cop in charge of drug investigations and Montreal\u0027s powerful West End Gang.
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Later that same Friday, Savoie had a meeting with his immediate supervisor, a superintendent, during which he broke down and cried. Despite the superintendent’s offers of support, Savoie did not want to talk about what was weighing on him. During a phone conversation after the meeting, Savoie assured the superintendent that he would explain everything after Christmas.
“I’d like to see as much as possible brought out as soon as possible, but I don’t want to hamper the ongoing investigations,” the federal politician said at the time. Clockwise, from left: RCMP drug-squad chief Claude Savoie, lawyer Sidney Leithman, West End Gang leader Allan Ross. From Gazette files.
The other revealed how, eight days before he was killed, Leithman told someone, whose name is redacted from the report, that he “controlled a high-ranking member of the RCMP, a regional director who sold information to the West End Gang.” Leithman added that “he had been paid for his services for several years.”Article content
While they passed on some information to the Montreal police, “they did not have any theories as to any possible role that Inspector Savoie might have played in that murder.” The earliest evidence of the relationship between Savoie, Ross and Leithman came in the form of an internal report Savoie drafted on Oct. 8, 1989.
To the investigators, it appeared clear Savoie began receiving bribes by January 1990, or a few months after he drafted his fictitious internal report. RCMP with 500 kg of cocaine on April 7, 1989, reported to be the largest cocaine seizure in Canadian history at the time. Sidney Leithman represented one of the accused at the trial in 1990.While he received bribe money from Ross, he lied to his family and said he was doing work for an attorney. He asked them to keep his sideline work a secret and assured them that, while it was legal, it “placed him in a conflict of interest situation.
“The analysis of the investigation files pertaining to Allan Ross revealed that almost all the investigations involving Ross had been undertaken outside of Montreal. Yet, Montreal is the centre of the West End Gang’s operations.” “It is obvious that role in the West End Gang is a major one based on the various connections that he has,” the investigators wrote in October 1989. “The investigation of George Neill which should be completed soon will surely make it possible for us to concentrate on Ross and gather more information on his clandestine activities.”
At one point, Savoie was seen meeting with Leithman in a cubicle normally used for questioning witnesses, something that would be considered highly irregular at the Montreal courthouse, then and now.Article content “A few times, Savoie’s subordinates advised him to be careful in his contacts with Leithman. The officer in charge Drug Enforcement Branch even questioned him about his relationship with Leithman. He reminded him that if Leithman did any talking he should have him coded as an informant and he should have a witness when meeting with him. Inspector Savoie was categorical: Sidney Leithman was not an informant and had no desire to become one.
That same section of the report also reveals how, between 1988 and 1991, more than one person outside the RCMP warned its Montreal Drug Section that one or more of its officers were corrupt. In an investigation called Operation Vodka, more than 5,100 kilograms of hashish was seized after a Soviet freighter arrived at the Port of Montreal.
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