The story of Paul Arthur remains one of the most unbelievable and largely
untold tales of institutional corruption in Canadian criminal history.
For years he and his buddies ran a drug-smuggling operation under the noses
of Canada's port system – largely due to the indifference of
police and shipping company officials.
A lucrative sideline to a 'day' job
Canada's ports – in particular Vancouver, Montreal and Halifax – are
logical arrival points for drugs originating from South America, Europe
or Africa. And consequently, for organized crime, corrupting the stevedores
and infiltrating the staff who work on the ports is critical to ensuring
drugs are removed from transport containers intact. Paul Arthur was such
a person – somebody who was enticed by the enormous sums he could
make acting as a "door" to make sure drugs went through Halifax
safe and sound.
How it worked was that the Montreal criminals would call up Arthur and
inform him of when shipments were arriving, giving him the code numbers
on the containers – information Arthur would pass on to friends working
for the shipping companies. When the containers with the drugs arrived,
the containers would be set aside on the docks, and then eventually opened,
with the drugs removed and put in vans and sent to Montreal or other cities.
Halifax harbour is one of the busiest in Canada - and a target for drug smugglers.
More than 500,000 containers move through two Halifax port terminals every
year. Since the early '90s, more than $2.5-billion worth of drugs
have been seized from containers coming through this port.
Arthur is a true Haligonian, born and bred in the area. From a young age,
he fell in love with cars – in particular anything that went fast.
His father worked on the docks, and in the '70s, Arthur joined him.
A stevedore in Halifax can make more than $100,000 a year.
It's unknown when Arthur began his career as a "door",
although in all likelihood it began sometime in the '80s. His partners
in crime were connected to the Hell's Angels, some of whom worked
on the docks with him.
A taste for expensive cars and NASCAR racing
Eventually Arthur began amassing a fortune. While he spent less and less
time working on the docks, his income from drug smuggling skyrocketed (he
would take a cut of every shipment). He bought land in 1999 and built a
large $500,000 house with a pool by a small lake just outside Halifax.
Over time, he bought at least 28 new sports cars and vintage
vehicles from six local dealerships, trading most of them in within a few
years of purchasing them. Later the RCMP concluded he was laundering his
drug profits this way.
One of the dozens of vintage cars once owned by Paul Arthur.
Arthur had also developed a taste for NASCAR racing. Every year he would
travel down to the U.S. with some of his buddies to watch the Daytona 500 – the
biggest NASCAR event of the year. Due to a prior conviction, Arthur was
not allowed into the U.S. So he persuaded a woman at the motor licensing
bureau to make him a fake driver's license in the name of one of
his close friends. It was during his travels to NASCAR events that Arthur
noticed the monster motor homes favored by wealthy fans of the sport.
In February of 2000, Arthur ordered a black motor home, built on a truck
chassis, that was worth about $700,000. At one point, he flew the motor
home dealer to Halifax on a private Lear jet where, after having dinner,
the dealer received a white pail stuffed with $20, $50 and $100 bills – totaling
$270,000 as a partial payment on the vehicle.
Wiretaps reveal connection to the Hell's Angels
By 2000, with corruption in the ports so blatant, the RCMP finally began
to investigate what was happening in Halifax. Two years later, the Mounties
focused its attention on Arthur, who was placed under surveillance, as
were many of the nearly a dozen collaborators working for him. The RCMP's
wiretaps proved that Arthur had connections to gangsters in Montreal, who
were connected to the Hell's Angels and Colombian drug cartels.
Paul Arthur's spacious lakeside home.
Arthur was arrested in July of 2002 after the RCMP had accumulated a massive
amount of evidence against him and his cohorts. They estimated he helped
smuggle $100-million worth of drugs through the docks. During the time
of their investigation, while Arthur reported an income of $380,000 from
working on the ports, he spent $2.6-million – most of it in $20 bills.
They found on his property sports cars, vintage cars, trucks, cash, and
recreational vehicles including the motor home and fancy motorbikes. And
they found plenty of excavating equipment and trailers – all totaling
millions.
Hoping to return to his old job - on the docks
Arthur pled guilty and was given a 14-year sentence. But by the summer
of 2005 he was out of prison having served one-sixth his term and currently
lives in a Halifax half-way house, supping every evening with his family,
and working for an excavation firm owned by one of his buddies. Arthur
is confident he will get his job back on the docks.
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