Detained since 2016, a cocaine importer was sentenced to eight years in prison last week, but was released the next day because his sentence had been served.
Posted at 7:00 a.m.
Jaime Flores, 56, was arrested following an investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police called Ashtray and which targeted cigarette traffickers and cocaine importers.
He had been framed by the leader of a team of truck drivers who was in fact a civilian undercover officer (COO) of the RCMP. Even the truckers who made trips to the United States that this mole hired were actually agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Flores pleaded guilty to counts of attempting to import 52 kg of cocaine and 75 kg of cocaine arriving from Houston, Texas, and Los Angeles, California, respectively, and failing to comply with conditions.
PHOTO ARCHIVES PRESS
Jaime Flores in 2014
Judge Marco Labrie, of the Court of Quebec, sentenced him to 8 years, but since preventive detention is 5 years and 4 months and each day counts as a day and a half, for a total of 8 years and 29 days, Flores only had one day left to serve.
Judge Labrie endorsed a common suggestion from the prosecution – represented by Mr.and Guillaume Lemay and M.and Sabrina Delli Fraine – and the defence, represented by Mand Jean-Pierre Sharpe.
An unruly mole
To arrive at this decision, the magistrate took into account several factors, in particular the difficult conditions of detention at the Montreal Detention Facility due to sanitary measures, but also alleged misconduct by the State in the management. of the ICA.
Among other things, he allegedly smuggled tobacco without police authorization on three occasions during the investigation, when he was a civilian undercover agent.
The defense had also submitted a motion to halt the judicial process with a component of entrapment, but the judge rejected it, concluding that a significant reduction in sentence would be the appropriate remedy.
Of note, at the time he was arrested in connection with Project Ashtray in 2016, Jaime Flores had conditions and was awaiting trial for importing cocaine after being apprehended in 2014 in a major investigation by the RCMP called Clemenza, and in which investigators had targeted the clans of the Montreal mafia who had taken over from the Rizzutos, weakened after Operation Coliseum in 2006.
Like about 40 other Clemenza defendants, Flores benefited from a stay of proceedings in 2017.
Wanted in the Clemenza project in 2014, Flores was only arrested a year and a half later, in January 2016, in Ecuador, after presenting a false passport.
Jaime Flores has several criminal records, including a nine-year sentence for conspiracy and drug trafficking imposed in the early 2000s in a Cornwall, Ontario case.
To reach Daniel Renaud, dial 514 285-7000, ext. 4918, write to [email protected] or write to the postal address of The Press.