Federal Mounties have arrested three men in Surrey, B.C., who they say are tied to an organized crime group with links to Mexican drug cartels believed to be importing cocaine to Canada.
RCMP federal investigators said Wednesday police searched a Surrey home in September that was surrounded by razor wire fencing with steel gates and arrested the men. Officers also seized 23 firearms, several thousand rounds of ammunition and “multi-kilos of illicit drugs” from the house.
Cpl. Arash Seyed, a spokesman for RCMP Federal Policing – Pacific Region, told a news conference that one of the men arrested was a Mexican national, while the other two are Canadian.
He said he could not say which cartel group the men were part of, but confirmed that the operation had been “disrupted as a result of the arrest of one of their main leaders in the United States over the summer.”
Seyed said the operation in B.C. had been “planning large scale distribution,” but police were able to “identify, disrupt and ultimately dismantle this Mexican drug cartel proxy before it gained its foothold in Canada.”
“The suspects have since been releasedand numerous drug and firearms related charges are being pursued,” he told reporters.
The announcement came on the same day that police said four other people suspected of trafficking large quantities of drugs, including diverted prescription pills, were arrested in Burnaby, B.C.
Seyed confirmed it was a “completely separate investigation.”
Police said in a news release Wednesday that the arrests in Burnaby stemmed from a four-month investigation into interprovincial drug trafficking that included executing search warrants in nearby Coquitlam and Surrey.
They say officers seized more than 9,500 Hydromorphone pills believed to be diverted prescription pills, as well as other substances, including more than a kilogram of suspected cocaine.
The group was allegedly shipping the drugs as far as Manitoba and the Yukon, as well as locally, police said.