Holiday Replay, 163: Sam Cooper on China political and Economic Warfare

Today, we welcome Sam Cooper, an author and journalist based in Ottawa.

He came in to talk about his reporting on PRC political and economic warfare, its impact on Canada and the United States, and how those tools are being used worldwide, including Taiwan, to undermine the rule of law and each nation's sovereignty.

This episode goes fast and has a lot of great information on how China sets conditions for winning without fighting. 

The One CA Podcast is here to inspire anyone interested in working in US foreign relations. - Often  called the last three feet of diplomacy. We bring in practitioners from all walks of foreign service including the military, diplomacy, nongovernmental, development, and field agents to talk about their experiences and work. 

To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail (dot) com

or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org

Special Thanks to Cafe Music BGM channel and their release, "Hip Hop Jazz & Smooth Jazz Instrumental." Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5yTtDZZiHg

----Transcript----

Transcript:

00:00:00    JACK GAINES
Today, we welcome Sam Cooper, author and journalist based out of Ottawa. He came in to talk about his reporting on PRC political and economic warfare and its impact on Canada and the United States and how those tools are being used around the world, including Taiwan, to undermine the rule of law and each nation's sovereignty. This episode goes fast and has a lot of great information on how China sets conditions for winning without fighting. So, let's get started.

00:00:27    SAM COOPER
In the course of reporting, I discovered the compound of Tiger Yuan, an individual that was directly investigated in this Chinese underground banking story, had the most weapons in Western Canada, if not across Canada, for a citizen. And so, when my sources said this person is or was PLA, this person has connectivity to the highest levels of organized crime. And this person is very politically connected, and their activity outside of organized crime appears to be directing Chinese state -friendly people what to do in Western Canada. That's when I really started to dig into and understand the Chinese interference story, starting on the West Coast and then moving across. Literally, I started reporting from Ottawa. That's when I got into the political side of it.

00:01:20    JACK GAINES
So how many weapons are you talking about? And are you talking about small arms, large arms, tactical, technicals? What was it that you were able to find?

00:01:29    SAM COOPER
I'll start with the big picture. I was directed to a compound in Chilliwack, British Columbia. This is very near the United States -Washington state border. It's just outside of Vancouver, and it was a compound of tremendous luxury. In an underground massive parking lot, there were about 80 luxury vehicles. that indicated huge-scale money laundering. There were American military jeeps and vintage machine guns. There was a fire truck. There was a diesel-type rig. There's Ferraris. And so, I was told that this person has vaults of restricted firearms. So, we're talking tactical weapons that you hold against your shoulder and extend your arm out as far as it can.

00:02:16    JACK GAINES
Yeah, long guns.

00:02:17    SAM COOPER
Right. Long guns. These are military-style weapons. I can't say they're AK -47s or Noriko. He didn't let you in there to mark all the numbers and he didn't give you the inventory sheets.

00:02:24    JACK GAINES
let you in there to mark all the numbers and he didn't give you the inventory sheets.

00:02:29    SAM COOPER
He didn't give me the inventory sheets, but Canada has to keep a log of the weapons out there as best as it can. And in an open-source photo, you've got a gangster sort of standing downstairs beside a luxury car with a, I believe it was sort of a burp gun. And then in the back corner, you could see an open door with just a room stacked with weapons. You could literally see a vintage machine gun, one of those ones that would have a sort of stand so you can shoot out of a trench, maybe back in the 50s or 60s. And my sources said, we know that this person has the largest cache of restricted and unrestricted weapons in Western Canada. As I wrote in Willful Blindness, this is... Chapo Guzman -style wealth in a Canadian property, and it makes no sense.

00:03:19    JACK GAINES
Well, it sounds like this person is a hub for gun running and money and probably drugs. Because if he's got storehouses for weapons, that means he can rotate them out for criminal groups that are moving through the area so that no one really gets tied to a weapon if there's ever a crime committed. But it also sounds like they've got connections

00:03:47    SAM COOPER
Yeah. Well, I would say you nailed everything in your question. And to unpack that, on the organized crime side, the information is this person is literally a revered hero from the People's Liberation Army. It's not that China did well in their border assault on Vietnam. They did pretty badly. But this person, Tiger Yuan, is glorified in various Chinese language documents. military veteran, is assessed by Canadian federal police to be in charge of gangs. He would be a person that is handling Chinese mafia in Canada and giving them directions to meet some of the Chinese Communist Party's political objectives.

00:04:30    JACK GAINES
So, he's a kingpin.

00:04:31    SAM COOPER
He's a kingpin, an intelligence handler involved in organized crime at the highest level and also with the capacity to direct these high -level triads. I think we're talking about what's known as the company. This is elite China -based triads that are active running weapons and drugs sentinel around the world and yet have connections at the highest level to military and intelligence and political figures for the parties. So yes, the type of person involved in trade -based money laundering, the ability to send weapons in and out of Canada, the ability to collect weapons from... Chinese visitors who happen to buy guns in Canada and then want to get rid of them. As you said, this military veteran can be a node to move them. I'm told through police sources; this person is suspected to be involved in the Chinese police station activity. So, as you know, that would include what was exposed by the FBI in New York, where we have purported community associations that are actually running these illegal...

00:05:38    JACK GAINES
Community police stations in other countries.

00:05:41    SAM COOPER
Exactly. And these would be used to harass dissidents, to go after Xi Jinping's so -called fox hunt targets. So, Tiger Yuan would be central to that. He would be central to meeting with Chinese language journalists. And I'm told giving them directions or coaching on the type of reporting they should be doing. He would be central to types of... fundraising activities that could blend legitimate business with illegitimate business and have those monies go into Canada's political system. Well,

00:06:17    JACK GAINES
after reading your book, Willful Blindness, one thing came to me, and that is that it looks like China has successfully mixed profiteering and foreign policy so that they can successfully tie the profits from narcotics to influence and persuasion in countries to achieve their foreign policy goals. I had John Cassara on recently, and he talked about that China has probably half of the global illicit trade profit coming into it. And when people measure China, they measure its GDP. They don't measure that black economy. Because most of it goes right back out into the world to fund these illicit criminal groups that are also complicit with the PRC and the money that goes to the pockets of people willing to take the influence dollars to do what PRC wants. But it was really your book that opened that perspective. And it sounds like what you're seeing is the tuning of that process. and how they're really bringing it to bear to see how far they can go and being successful in moving a country's orbit into the PRC influence space.

00:07:37    SAM COOPER
Yeah, I agree with everything you said there, and thank you for saying that. I do think my book had a little bit of a cognitive advance in showing people that when we're speaking about the mercantilism of the People's Republic of China and the trade mixed into that, by design, I believe, is trade -based money laundering in which, of course, there are some honest tycoons or almost as honest as you can be within China's system. But there are many that have both legitimate and underground casino facilitation, capital flake facilitation, direct narcotics trafficking, weapons. But China doesn't look at those people as the government should have a distance from them. China sees those people as ones that have connections abroad, ones that have great influence in diaspora communities. And business persons that are involved in organized crime in Beijing's playbook should be used to influence politicians that are looking for votes in the diaspora.

00:08:43    JACK GAINES
Do you think that Xi Jinping and the PRC allow a certain amount of wealth and influence or affluence? in these people that are expats around the world in exchange for conducting these types of operations?

00:09:00    SAM COOPER
Yes, I think there's a lot going on, and I'm always trying to clarify my understanding, but some have coined the term strategic corruption. This is what we saw in Ukraine for years before Putin made his move. We saw the oligarchs and the tycoons, people like Semyon Mogilev ich, had great control over the Ukrainian resource industries. A person named Boris Berstein, who settled in Toronto, was a major underground banker and money launderer with connectivity to the KGB. So, we've seen this playbook in Ukraine, having people with gang connections or direct intelligence connections corrupt foreign governments and try to pave the way. And I think China is doing a bigger and even more sophisticated variation on that now, where they want people that are, as I've reported in Canada, we have major real estate developers, major portions of Vancouver and Toronto are in fact Chinese or Hong Kong money. And these big real estate developers, there's no question that Beijing has relationships with them, that they will be protected in their illegitimate business activities if they deliver objectives. to Beijing. And there's so much more going on, but yes, in a nutshell, Beijing offers protection to the highest-level criminals in the world if they will deliver political objectives wherever they are.

00:10:27    JACK GAINES
Are you seeing a cohesion of operations between them? How closely tied are they to Beijing? Or is it decentralized to where they say, look, if you build influence and you just let us know who you have contacts with, we'll let you know if we need you. Is it more of a mafia style relationship? How closely tied are they?

00:10:46    SAM COOPER
Well, that is the trillion -dollar question. I mean, I'm always trying to get my understanding. And I'm sure they don't just show you.

00:10:52    JACK GAINES
I'm sure they don't just show you. Here, here's our relationship map now. I mean, I spent a lot of time thinking about it.

00:10:55    SAM COOPER
here's our relationship map now. I mean, I spent a lot of time thinking about it. And as best as I can understand, and I'm always talking to experts to understand more. Sure. But it's not as hierarchical and rigid. I've been told that it is the most fluid. entrepreneurial system you can imagine. There's all types of competition. We have something called Guanxi, which is this very deep sort of transactional cultural relationships between people at high levels in China's system. And we have interrelationships of gangs, interrelationships of intelligence agencies. We have competition among both of those forces.

00:11:40    SAM COOPER
To boil it down, I don't think Xi Jinping is able to say, OK, mafia leader A, you're going to go to Canada, specifically Toronto, and achieve this. It's more that we have what you know is the united front system. That is, all these community groups at the end of the day have been co -opted by officials in consulates around the world so that the community groups are controlled directly by Chinese intelligence officials in embassies and consulates. And they have various levels of tasking to these community groups, who I am saying are almost exclusively involved, high -level tycoon type gang associates. And then within these United Front networks, you have intelligence handlers of the type to circle back to this BC case of this PLA veteran, Tiger Yuan, who is able to be like an area manager of legitimate and illegitimate. business activity in various regions. In my understanding, we have some bosses in Toronto, Ontario, for the Eastern Canada, who are this blend of an intelligence handler and a very high-level organized crime person. We have similar bosses in Western Canada. And I'm sure because I've read a corruption case involving a senator in San Francisco. We don't need to name the name, but this senator was allegedly involved in offshore arms trading, an FBI sting operation got him. He was involved in talking to the various families in that area. By families, I mean triads. And so, I have to believe in California, we have these very same type of PLA intelligence handlers that are into that fluid mix of gangsters, businesspersons, politicians. that one way or another, they'll get their guanxi from Beijing if they deliver objectives. Right.

00:13:40    JACK GAINES
And then you have the community police there to track people down if they take their wealth and disappear, or if they're not producing, or if they don't feel like they're part of the fold.

00:13:51    SAM COOPER
Yeah. The CCP police station really just made everything we're talking about in this fluid network much easier to understand because they had little bricks and mortar shops. Right. that the FBI and others have discovered have both gangsters and traveling CCP officials involved to look over the community.

00:14:11    JACK GAINES
Right. Because you have to have an enforcer. If you're going to run a loose network of criminals, you have to have an enforcer of some type in case people get their own ideas or their own ambitions to get them back in line.

00:14:22    SAM COOPER
That's absolutely true. I'll keep circling back to this person in the Vancouver area with the largest collections of personal weapons. You're a fan.

00:14:30    JACK GAINES
You're a fan. You want to go check out that fire trick. I mean, I know I do. I don't think either of us will be invited in the near future.

00:14:35    SAM COOPER
don't think either of us will be invited in the near future. But look, who's the person that's going to be able to keep gangsters in line, keep politicians in line? Right. It's a person with a lot of guns and a lot of respect. Someone that's revered by the diaspora.

00:14:49    JACK GAINES
A lot of money. A lot of money.

00:14:50    SAM COOPER
lot of money. and a lot of money that they're happy to donate to Beijing's operations because they will have, in turn, the protection to run their operations.

00:15:00    JACK GAINES
Sure. So, it's a cooperative.

00:15:02    SAM COOPER
It's a cooperative. With a line with teeth.

00:15:03    JACK GAINES
With a line with teeth. Okay. And then you were able to go to Taiwan. Was that to talk with Taiwanese officials about what's going on in Canada? Was it to do strategy on their upcoming elections? What were you doing that you can talk about?

00:15:19    SAM COOPER
I can say that just as I launched my new journalism platform, I got the invitation from - You got to plug the platform,

00:15:25    JACK GAINES
got to plug the platform, start over.

00:15:27    SAM COOPER
Yeah. Okay. So yeah, I mean, what I can say is, as soon as I launched the Bureau, my new independent journalism platform - Beautiful.

00:15:36    JACK GAINES
Beautiful.

00:15:36    SAM COOPER
Beautiful. Right? So that I can report with the depth that I did in my book. I can do this in Canadian media. I was invited by the officials in Taiwan to travel to Taipei in September. And I think their interest was they had understood that I had a good grasp on China's political warfare and election interference in Canada. And I had talked to the officials in Ottawa from Taiwan and they said, there's a lot to report on. We want to have good relationships with international journalists so they can tell the story that Taiwan is an important democracy that really should be understood and valued by the rest of the democratic world. that's under deep threat right now, as you know, Jack, from the People's Liberation Army and all sorts of political warfare. So, I was invited to travel with 17 international journalists, and we had deep and great access to Taiwanese officials, including the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of the Mainland Affairs Council, which is essentially, I judge, an intelligence agency. It's the only one that can deal with Beijing because, as you know, Beijing will not talk to Taiwan government to government. They see it as a renegade province. I did four reports from Taiwan, and my focus was, of course, I'm exposing China's activities in Canada, but I'm always looking for corroboration and context and understanding. So, I was asking the Mainland Affairs Council officials. I'm seeing, for example, Fujian organized crime figures running CCP police stations in Sharon and Vancouver. I'm seeing them involved in election interference transfers. Can you tell me about similar activities? And it was very refreshing for me to get a direct answer from an official. He told me, I'm going to break news for you about this new scheme we've discovered. China is using underground gambling networks. in Taiwan, in efforts to influence our upcoming election, they are trying to... And you threw your arms up and said, that's what I said!

00:17:46    JACK GAINES
And you threw your arms up and said, that's what I said!

00:17:49    SAM COOPER
Well, I said, thank you for confirming from a high -level official of another country what I'm seeing. That is, China is using people that are running underground casinos in Canada to interfere in our elections in very complex ways. And in Taiwan, you're telling me that there's underground betting markets on elections and they try to skew the gambling odds so that this feeds into the actual election day result.

00:17:54    JACK GAINES
of another country what

00:18:13    SAM COOPER
that this feeds into the actual election day result.

00:18:16    JACK GAINES
Right.

00:18:16    SAM COOPER
And they told me officials from Beijing are not only working with these organized crime gambling networks, but they're directing them in election interference. So, yes, I think that was a great little story for me to break. I'm not looking for confirmation bias. I'm looking for corroboration, but I got it there. But it's nice to get a little confirmation bias once in a while.

00:18:33    JACK GAINES
But it's nice to get a little confirmation bias once in a while. Yeah, it is. Everyone likes a bone.

00:18:35    SAM COOPER
Yeah, it is. Everyone

00:18:38    SAM COOPER
They threw me a bone, Jack.

00:18:40    JACK GAINES
Well, it's interesting because, as you know, the U.S. has a base in South Korea, and the Chinese know about it, and they didn't open their own base in Korea. They opened a casino right in the same area. And I was just like, man, how typical. Yeah. Because that way they're making money and they're able to do espionage at the same time instead of costing the Beijing government a dime. They're actually profitable as they conduct foreign policy and influence in the area. I have to admit, I think it's smart, but it's also the end result that they come out with is not a good society. Because if... Their free trade zones were successful and they started building casinos and pretty soon there's an illegal industry that's so powerful that it's swaying the government to its will. What ends up happening is you get this totalitarian financial government that really leaves out all of the public citizens and just runs things the way PRC wants. And it just doesn't handle well. Does that make sense? I see that as the problem with the PRC's model.

00:19:56    SAM COOPER
Yeah, no, I mean, that really resonates with me. I mean, first of all, you're exactly right. It is devilishly clever to use a casino that pays for itself, and they can use that for their gathering. But as you say, it's amoral, right? So, I really do believe that governments are a reflection of the people and the parties that the people elect. To get a little philosophical here, I mean, I think the Chinese Communist Party totally cut corners trying to catch up. And they are just in a moral operation. As I've reported, they leveraged these Hong Kong tycoons and said, look, you teach us how to do capitalism and we'll let you do your organized crime business and we'll profit together. But when you get in bed with the devil, there are other people around the world that don't like it. Right. And so, I think my struggle in Canada is. Maybe I've been a little bit at the tip of the spear. Maybe it's because the upbringing, my father went over to a school in Switzerland and was supposed to be a big businessman and diplomat. And he tossed that aside and became a Christian minister instead. And maybe he hammered it into me that there's good money and there is bad money. I really do believe that. And Beijing, in their mercantilism, they'll use any dirty type of business to try to... overcome governments in the Marshall Islands or what they're doing in Africa. And in Canada, it's my own view that for too long, our elites have turned a blind eye, or as I wrote, they've been willfully blinded to the downside of this Chinese mercantilism. And I do believe that when you see cities start to be overrun with tent encampments because of opioid addiction and fentanyl, you're now directly seeing the price that's paid for that trade -based money laundering. And as I've written, people that work honest jobs being pushed out of the center of cities in Canada because without any exaggeration, illicit flows from China have become material to prices of real estate in Vancouver and Toronto in the same way that the Latin cartels might have influenced real estate in Miami. You just don't win in the long run when organized crime starts to take a big chunk of your economy and they're working for a foreign government.

00:22:10    JACK GAINES
So where do you see Canada going?

00:22:12    SAM COOPER
It's hard for me to say where Canada will go because there's a Foreign Interference Commission coming up. It's actually going to start at the end of this month that will examine this election interference story that I broke with my former employer, Global News. and that I'm still writing on and still exposing every week for the Bureau. But I don't have a great degree of confidence, and many others don't, that the mandate of that commission is really set up to get to the bottom of the issue. I don't want to get into too much information here, but I've already done reports to the Bureau showing that a mandate only focusing on election interference at the federal election in the past two Canadian national elections. is literally only the tip of the iceberg of China's interference. And my stories through documents have proven that. So where does Canada go? Others that I've interviewed and quoted in my stories say, look, Canada, through no exaggeration, we're facing a saturation of China's influence and interference networks to the point where there's corruption. And Canada is in a position where we need to change some laws. We need more enforcement. for police so they can handle these organized crime networks. We don't have a RICO Act that is a racketeering act in Canada. We don't have a foreign agent registry, which, Jack, I'm sure you're aware, is the very key law that is used in every case so far in the Chinese police stations investigated by the Department of Justice in the United States. Canada lacks these laws, so I won't have any confidence that we're going to turn the corner until we have a government that... put some of these very basic modern laws against hostile state activity in place in Canada.

00:24:03    JACK GAINES
Do you think that Canada is in danger of losing its 5i status because of the amount of influence? Or do you see still a core of law enforcement and military that's protecting civil society and protecting that intelligence cooperation? Or how deeply corrupt do you think the influence is? And do you think it is threatening Five Eyes?

00:24:28    SAM COOPER
My very basic answer is yes. I think Canada's status in the Five Eyes has already unofficially been downgraded. As you know, Jack, Canada has been left out completely out of AUKUS. And I do believe that part of the reason Canada is not at the big boys' table of the Western alliance... is that we have lost trust. We can just point to examples like this RCMP corruption Cameron Ortis case. Canada's highest intelligence official for law enforcement leaked secrets to international Hezbollah networks. As I've reported, there's another angle to the case. Cameron Ortis have leaked signals intelligence to Beijing. And so that's just one case. But I think this political infiltration... story is an even bigger reason why Canada has lost trust within the five eyes. And I would like to have confidence that the bond of the sort of post -World War II alliance will continue just out of tradition. But practically speaking, I just think it's natural that if Canada keeps going in this direction of having deep interference in each and every federal election, that it would only make sense that Washington starts to leave. out of conversations.

00:25:48    JACK GAINES
Or constricting certain accesses.

00:25:51    SAM COOPER
Absolutely. It's only prudent that Washington should be starting to hold its cards closer to its chest. I know it's not very easy to say things like that diplomatically, but I just think these are the real conversations.

00:26:03    JACK GAINES
Now, you also mentioned Hezbollah. And I remember in our last discussion, you mentioned that Hezbollah and I believe Iranian illicit networks are also had ties in Ottawa. Do you want to expand on that a little bit? And do you think that they're also collaborating with the PRC?

00:26:23    SAM COOPER
What I know about Hezbollah really starts with my interest in the transnational money laundering story and how Canadian cities have just been overrun by Chinese networks. So, I started understanding that. And then I had conversations with people that were very involved in the DEA special operations. The DEA has a lot of intelligence around the world because they have access to these elite organized crime actors that have direct connectivity to Russia, Iran, Beijing. And so, through my sourcing, I understood that they were very at first surprised back in around 2008 to uncover that cartels in Colombia had direct relationships with Hezbollah actors. And then furthermore. Hezbollah, I was told, had agents in about five to six Canadian cities that were believed to have command and control of some global Hezbollah networks. And again, my U.S. sources said they went up to Ottawa and said, Canada, you've got a problem. Let's work together on this. We're working together with Australia.

00:27:40    SAM COOPER
People running these transnational crime networks know that they can operate in Canada without getting wiretapped because our legal system just isn't set up that way. It's not very enforcement friendly. My sources in the States were just deeply shocked and confused that the RCMP couldn't cooperate with them and do taps on these Haskell operatives. So, I have followed the money laundering story. And as I was reporting on Cameron Ortis, I knew this was big, but... We started to hear more evidence come out that there were networks of Iran -connected currency traders in Toronto running literally billions of dollars through Canadian banks and offshore. One currency trader alone that's been named in an FBI case in California is also an organized crime that moved $3 .5 billion through Canadian banks for these Iranian Hezbollah slash organized crime drug money laundering global networks. Your question was, are they working with China? And my answer is I've seen open source that at some level, Iran and China are working together and they're wanting to see division between Canada and our allies on the Middle East issues. They're wanting to see Western ships blocked up by the Houthi rebels. Chinese ships can pass through there. So, yeah, I think China and Iran are working together.

00:29:09    JACK GAINES
Been an easy interview. Is there anything else you want to add or plug? I mean, we've talked about your book. We've talked about your site. Is there anything else you want to discuss?

00:29:21    SAM COOPER
Yeah, sure. I think a lot of people often ask me or say, Sam, at the Bureau or your previous work, you were at the cutting edge of reporting on some dangerous people in Canada. People often say, you know, does that get scary? Or do you or Canadian journalists? ever face threats. And Jack, just days after I testified in Ottawa about China's interference against Canadian politicians, Canadian intelligence had warned me as a journalist that Chinese operatives had been tasked in Canada to research my journalism and my networks and to look into my life. And a little bit ironically, maybe shockingly for me, a couple of days after my testimony, The RCMP warned me that they had a threat due to my reporting on the People's Republic of China. And Jack, it wasn't a comfortable experience, but what I want to tell you is I took some measures. I decided I'll find ways to cope for myself and those close to me. But what I'm reporting on must be pretty important if Canada's national security force is telling me that I'm angering China. I have to continue because I have more information. And I just think it's important for your listeners to know that. I'm a proud Canadian, but as I've said, we're at a point where some very deep and serious changes need to be made in this country so that we can get back to being a great Five Eyes partner.