The Bangkok-based human smugglers who have so far sent two shiploads of illegal migrants to Canada have been called “sophisticated” and “well organized.” But nobody ever said they were perfect.
Before the last ship, the MV Sun Sea, left Thailand in July carrying almost 500 Sri Lankan migrants, the smugglers made the passengers sign contracts that spelled out how much each owed for the journey to Canada.
The contracts were then mailed to Norway, ostensibly for safekeeping. They were, after all, valuable receipts. They were proof of millions worth of uncollected debts, not to mention highly sensitive.
The problem was, they were mailed to the wrong address.
According to newly released details of the case, the contracts — in which Sun Sea passengers pledged to pay the smugglers between $5,000 and $30,000 upon reaching Canada — were mislabelled and delivered to the wrong person.
The recipient handed them to Norwegian police, who passed them on to their Canadian counterparts. The gaffe has given Canadian officials a unique insight into the smugglers’ system of payment, which involved an up-front deposit of about $5,000 and a hefty debt that was to be paid off after arrival in Canada. It has also linked the smuggling operation to Norway.
The Norwegian connection and the blunder that brought it to light are described in a transcript of an Immigration and Refugee Board hearing held in Vancouver on April 7. A declassified copy of the transcript was recently released to the National Post.
“Now, these are a series of payment contracts signed by various individuals who ended up travelling on the MV Sun Sea,” Kenny Nicolaou, a Canada Border Services Agency representative, explained at the hearing.
“You can see the general tenor of the contract. Essentially it says, ‘I paid this much up front, depending on the situation, and I owe this much, who this family member in Canada pledges to pay on my behalf once I arrive.”
Mr. Nicolaou said the Sun Sea’s arrival in Canada was “the end result of a sophisticated, well organized, for profit human smuggling operation orchestrated by a network of agents in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia.”
Boarding began in April 2010 and occurred in “continuing waves” until the ship sailed for Canada on July 5. An “intricate network of agents” organized the effort, he said. “It was well organized and it was designed to generate large sums of money.”
The Sun Sea arrived off the British Columbia coast last August carrying 492 Sri Lankan migrants who had contracted smugglers to ferry them from Thailand. All have made refugee claims. The Canadian government has spent more than $25-million so far dealing with the ship.
In all likelihood, Canadian authorities already knew about the Sun Sea by the time the contracts were intercepted. But the package would have given them advance notice about who was on board, how much they had paid and how much they still owed the smuggling syndicate.
The CBSA raised the Norwegian matter at the hearing of a Sun Sea migrant whom the government alleges was involved in the smuggling operation. The man’s lawyer downplayed the significance of the documents, saying “there is no credible evidence before the board to say that these are the contracts that the people on board the Sun Sea were a party to.”
The IRB has sealed all the exhibits related to the Sun Sea refugee cases.
The RCMP is investigating the suspected organizers of the Sun Sea and Ocean Lady, the ship that smuggled 76 Sri Lankan migrants to Canada in 2009. To date, the IRB has ruled that four of the Sun Sea migrants were members of the Tamil Tigers rebel group.
The intended recipient of the contracts was not identified in the transcript but Norway has a large Sri Lankan population and is the base of the Nediyavan faction of the Tamil Tigers. The head of the Nediyavan group, Perinpanayagam Sivaparam, was arrested in Olso last month.
Dutch police reportedly want to question him about an alleged Tamil Tigers fundraising network that has been extorting money from ethnic Tamils in the Netherlands. The Dutch authorities arrested seven suspects in April.
The European case is similar to the RCMP’s recent investigation of the World Tamil Movement, a Toronto-based rebel front group that raised millions to support the Tamil Tigers until the federal government banned it in 2008, shut it down and seized its assets.
