| Birth Name: | Joseph Philippe Claude Savoie | ||||
| Birth Date: | 1943 | ||||
| Birth Place: | Montreal, Quebec, Canada | ||||
| Death Place: | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada | ||||
| Module: |
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| Serviceyears: | 1965–1992 | ||||
Joseph Philippe Claude Savoie (1943 – 21 December 1992) was a Canadian official with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) who acted simultaneously a co-conspirator with Montreal mobster Allan "The Weasel" Ross and his West End Gang. He committed suicide in his office at RCMP headquarters in Ottawa after his links to organized crime were exposed by investigative journalists from the CBC program The Fifth Estate. His exposure shattered the popular image of the RCMP as an incorruptible police force and was described by Canadian scholar Steven Schneider as "the biggest case of police corruption in Canada for years."
Claude Savoie was born in Montreal and joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in 1965.[1] Being of French-Canadian descent, he served as the RCMP's liaison officer at the Canadian embassy in Paris until 1986.[2] That year, he was recalled to Montreal to join the RCMP's anti-drug squad. However, upon his return to the city, Savoie experienced financial problems.[3]
In 1987, during the glasnost ("openness") period in the Soviet Union, Savoie took part in a joint Soviet-Canadian investigation of a drug trafficking ring concerning the vory v zakone ("thieves in law", i.e., Russian organized crime).[4] He twice visited Moscow to hold discussions with Soviet militsiya officers. The investigation ended with a large shipment of hashish, which had arrived from Odessa aboard a Soviet freighter, being seized by the RCMP at the Port of Montreal.[5]
Through his work, Savoie came to know a prominent Montreal lawyer, Sidney Leithman, who usually defended the city's organized crime figures. Although it was a major breach of ethics on the part of both men, Savoie and Leithman started to trade information, with Leithman informing on his own clients while Savoie divulged what the RCMP knew about the Montreal underworld. This practice came to cause tensions between Canadian and U.S. law enforcement, as the Americans complained that whatever information they shared with the Canadians always seemed to reach Montreal organized crime.
When Savoie was promoted as chief of the RCMP's Montreal Drug Section in January 1989, there were concerns by other Mounties about his relationship with Leithman.[6] A secret RCMP report from 1993 stated: "It was not unusual to see Leithman meeting with Inspector Savoie inside his Montreal Drug Section office. On at least one occasion, such a meeting took place behind closed doors and lasted more than a half an hour. When his clients were arrested, Leithman arrived quickly at the office of Inspector Savoie. On a few occasions during [a] trial of Colombian drug traffickers, Inspector Savoie made impromptu visits to the courtroom."[7]
Later in 1989, at a meeting in Leithman's office, Savoie was introduced to West End Gang leader Allan "The Weasel" Ross, where it was agreed that Savoie would sell information to Ross in exchange for a regular salary of $200,000. In a report dated 8 October 1989, Savoie stated that he had first met Leithman regarding Ross in late September.[8] Writing in the third person, he stated: "Inspector Savoie stated that he had first met with attorney Sidney Leithman concerning Allan Ross at the end of September 1989. He reported that, according to Leithman, Ross was worried about the American investigation being conducted on him. After his conversation with Leithman, Inspector Savoie explained that he had decided to meet with Allan Ross to turn him into an informant."[9] Savoie further wrote that he met Ross alone in Leithman's office on 6 October, but nothing came of the meeting.[10]
Savoie's report appeared to be part of an attempt to build a defense should his contacts with Ross and Leithman be exposed.[11] Savoie claimed that he had the approval of an RCMP superintendent to meet Ross alone, a claim that the superintendent later denied.[12] Several months later, in January 1990, Savoie took a lavish three week long vacation without his wife.[13]
Insistence by U.S. law enforcement that there was a "leak" in the RCMP grew more intense after Savoie was promoted, and finally reached the point where the Americans refused to share information with the Mounties on the grounds that there was a "mole" inside the service. As the director of the RCMP's national anti-drug squad, Savoie had access to all of the service's investigations across Canada and access to information being shared by U.S., European and Latin American police services as well. Despite his extra income, Savoie continued to live modestly and spent most of Ross' bribe money on his mistress, although Canadian journalist Robert Knuckle noted: "...that Savoie handled even that extravagance with discretion". Savoie was well-liked and respected by his colleagues, and many found it difficult to believe that a man who was known for living modestly could be corrupt.
One RCMP officer, Carl MacLeod, once asked for Savoie to provide him with $3,500 in flash money to assist with an investigation that was about to expand from Toronto into Montreal, which Savoie refused. At the time, MacLeod felt that Savoie's rejection was due to bureaucratic politics, but has since speculated that the rejection – which stymied his investigation – might had been due to corruption.
One of Savoie's subordinates, Constable Jorge Leite, sold information to the Cali Cartel of Colombia, which had a strong presence in Montreal at the time. Leite, a former Marine with the Portuguese Navy, had joined the RCMP in 1987. Inès Cecila Barbosa, an agent of the Cali Cartel, served as the organization's money launderer in Montreal, and it was to her that Leite had been selling information. Savoie is also believed to have sold information to Barbosa. In April 1991, the RCMP was monitoring a 240-kilogram shipment of cocaine from the Cali Cartel to the West End Gang as part of Project Carton/Valpro, which it "lost track of" while Savoie met with Leithman three times that same week.[14]
In April 1991, a shipment of cocaine from Colombia worth $410 million arrived at the Port of Montreal, which the RCMP was aware of. Much to the surprise of the constables watching the warehouse where the cocaine was hidden, no one arrived to pick it up. After waiting for a number of days, the RCMP seized the cocaine, but the officers involved were puzzled that the West End Gang had not immediately retrieved it, as was normal practice, despite having ample time to do so. The following month, another shipment of cocaine worth $340 million arrived at the Port of Montreal that the RCMP was also aware of. Once again, no one arrived at the warehouse to pick up the shipment. The cocaine was again seized. Given the value of the cocaine in both shipments, it was realized that the West End Gang was aware that the RCMP was watching the warehouses. Savoie requested that the RCMP's internal affairs department investigate who was selling information to the West End Gang, singling out Leite as a likely suspect. Though Leite was corrupt, it is believed that he was set up as a "fall guy" for Savoie. On 5 May 1991, an internal affairs investigation led by Inspector Yves Roussel began with the aim of finding the "mole".
According to a secret RCMP report from 1993, Savoie revealed the identity of a RCMP informant in the West End Gang to Leithman.[15] On 5 May 1991the same day the internal affairs investigation was launchedLeithman told someone whose name is still redacted on the report that he "controlled a high-ranking member of the RCMP, a regional director who sold information to the West End Gang" and "he had been paid for his services for several years."[16] Leithman did not name this individual, but he appears to have been referring to Savoie.[17]
On 13 May, Leithman was publicly gunned down in Mount Royal. Discovered inside of his car was a piece of paper with Savoie's unlisted phone number. An informant in the Montreal underworld mentioned that Leithman had in his office safe numerous photocopies of C237 forms (daily reports that Mounties are required to submit about the status of their investigations) and had given them to Ross. Another informer mentioned that he heard rumours that Leithman had waved around the C237 forms in his office as a symbol of his power while he also provided them to Ross. The most redacted section of the 1993 RCMP report relates to Leithman's murder.[18] The report states: "Inspector Savoie’s contacts with Sidney Leithman and Allan Ross in the spring of 1991 finally reveal the complex dynamics that linked the three men before the murder of Sidney Leithman. Those contacts may raise questions regarding Savoie’s possible role in Leithman’s murder on May 13, 1991."[19]
Savoie was shielded for a time when Leite was exposed in May 1991. Savoie shifted rumors of a "mole" in the RCMP onto Leite, whom he argued was the one who must been selling information. However, there still remained the lingering question of who had tipped off Leite that he was facing arrest, allowing him to flee to his native Portugal. Leite was clearly aware that he was under investigation, as he claimed to be unable to work due to marital problems as he went about methodically preparing his flight from Canada, which occurred on 22 May. On 1 June, Savoie was promoted to be the director of the RCMP's national anti-drug squad in Ottawa.[20] Following Ross's arrest in Florida on 7 October 1991, a police search of his Montreal home uncovered his possession of the rumoured C237 forms. As C237 forms are closely guarded and Ross had multiple forms filed from different officers since 1989, it indicated that a senior RCMP officernot a low-ranking constable like Leitehad been selling them. In April 1992, Savoie was transferred over to become assistant director of the Criminal Intelligence Service.
While visiting a contact serving a federal prison sentence in Alberta, producer Daniel Burke of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC) The Fifth Estate heard rumours that Savoie was working for Ross and resolved to begin his own investigation. Being of an Irish working-class background, Burke knew many people from the Pointe-Saint-Charles neighborhood of Montreal where most of the West End Gang originated from. He was also familiar with many of the city's drug dealers as a cocaine addict.[21] Burke stated in a 2008 interview: "I was on drugs then and I was fucked...I found out about it from one of the drug traffickers I knew. Savoie was corrupt. He was taking money from one of the biggest drug traffickers in Canada".[22]
Burke was able to deceive Savoie into giving him an interview by claiming he was doing a story on the West End Gang. On camera, Burke then confronted him with the evidence linking him to Leithman and Ross, which Savoie had not expected.[23] In 1992, The Fifth Estate aired an episode that exposed the close links between Savoie, Ross and Leithman, revealing that Savoie had met Ross at an Italian restaurant in Montreal and at Leithman's office. The episode also revealed that Savoie had repeatedly phoned the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to ask what the agency knew about Ross and was always refused under the grounds the DEA no longer trusted the RCMP. The federal prosecutor at Ross's trial in Florida, David McGee, was interviewed on the program and stated he had seen evidence that Ross had a source inside the RCMP.
On The Fifth Estate, Savoie stated: "Allan Ross, for us from '86 to '91, was not one of our problems. Allan Ross – everybody says he was head of this. People were saying this. But I must say that in my work, I wouldn't be able to say that. And we were not sure, we never had him pinned." In a follow-up interview, he said: "I know with Allan Ross, there's no doubt that was word always you know that he had access to somebody and you know maybe he did...And I gather from you wanting to talk to me that you feel maybe I was one of those people on the list and that's fair game I guess...Sometimes people make mistakes. What can I tell you?" Savoie claimed that he was trying to persuade Ross to work as an informer, then changed his story to say that was trying to work out a plea bargain to spare Ross from being imprisoned in the U.S. Savoie went to these meetings alone and without telling his superiors, both of which were major violations of RCMP procedure.
In another interview with Hana Gartner of The Fifth Estate, Savoie stated that he last seen Ross in May 1992 just before his conviction in Florida and that: "He [Ross] wasn't an informant, nor was I an informant for him. But I knew him. Put it that way. I met him". The documentary aired footage of Savoie talking with Ross in a Montreal coffee shop. Gartner also brought up the case of Leite, asking Savoie pointed questions about who had tipped him off that he was under investigation and facing arrest for corruption.
On Friday, 18 December 1992, Savoie told a fellow Mountie that he was feeling depressed because a journalist was going to run an unflattening story about his relationship with an informer.[24] Later the same day, he broke down in tears in front of a superintendent but was unwilling to talk about what was distressing him.[25] Savoie's wife reported that he did not seem upset or sad during his last weekend with her.[26]
On 21 December 1992, Savoie committed suicide in his office in Ottawa minutes before he was due to face interrogation by RCMP internal affairs officers. He wrapped his jacket around his service revolver as a makeshift suppressor, pressed the weapon against his temple, then pulled the trigger. Savoie's suicide was not noticed at first as the secretaries mistook the gunshot for a desk drawer being slammed shut, and his corpse was only discovered fifteen minutes after his death when internal affairs detectives went to his office to see why he had not arrived for the interview. Savoie, who had been the subject of an internal police investigation for several months, killed himself the day before the CBC aired another Fifth Estate program on drug trafficking which further implicated him, alleging that he had warned Ross that U.S. authorities were preparing an indictment against him.[27]
Savoie was buried on Christmas Eve 1992 with no honor guard of the Mounties, as is usually the case with a deceased RCMP officer. John Westlake, a Montreal police detective who had known Savoie, explained his suicide: "He had no choice but to kill himself because of the circumstances of his family and the disgrace of going to jail. Have you ever heard of an inspector in the RCMP going to jail? Very rare. They'd kill themselves before that." RCMP Corporal Jean-Pierre Boucher, who had known Savoie, stated in 2007: "He became as bad as the guys he was after. It was a terrible shame, because Savoie was a good man. In a moment of weakness, he went bad. That's all it takes, you know. When Savoie took one envelope, he was finished. As soon as you take one, they've got you and you're done." MacLeod stated that Savoie was very similar to Patrick Kelly, saying: "To me, the Savoie case has a lot in common with the Kelly case. They're both examples of what can happen to someone who gets too close to the bad guys and the big money. You gotta to be able to handle that. But some guys can't and it ruins them."
Burke stated about Savoie's suicide: "For all I know, it may have been a choice his colleagues forced him to make because they didn't want him to reveal further corruption. I don’t know. All I know is that I didn’t feel fucking bad about it."[28] In 2011, Burke stated when asked if he felt guilty about Savoie's suicide: "People ask me if I felt bad. Fuck no. That was the game. He was a dirty cop, and I nabbed him."[29]
The exposure of Savoie destroyed the popular image of the RCMP as an incorruptible force.[1] Even more humiliating for the service was the fact that journalists had exposed Savoie rather than his fellow policemen. There had been other cases of corrupt Mounties before, but Savoie was the most senior officer ever exposed as corrupt. Knuckle wrote: "Inspector Claude Savoie is the first senior RCMP officer to be caught on the take and the highest ranking Mountie to have his reputation marred by scandal and corruption". It is believed that, with regard to the two shipments of cocaine at the port of Montreal that the West End Gang did not pick up in the spring of 1991, that it was Savoie rather than Leite who tipped off the gang that the warehouses were being watched.
Journalist Julian Sher, who worked on the Savoie story alongside Burke, stated in a 2010 interview that he felt guilty about Savoie's suicide, saying: "All I could think was that his kids would never have another Christmas with their father. But I have to remind myself that I'm not the one who accepted the bribes."[30] In 2022, Sher stated: "I didn't kill him, I didn't load the gun, I didn't put the gun to his head. He made his choices. I'm not responsible but if Dan [Burke] and I had decided not to do the story, if we had not covered this stuff, would he be alive? He might have decided to kill himself when the RCMP investigated him...The lesson I learned from that is the consequences of our work. For many of the people we tell stories about, it's their lives and sometimes their deaths."[31]
In December 1993, the RCMP presented a 75-page report about l'affaire de Savoie that was so embarrassing that Solicitor General Herb Gray only allowed a two-page summary to be published.[32] The full report was only obtained by Paul Cherry, the crime correspondent of The Montreal Gazette, in 2022; even today much of the report is still redacted.[33]
Journalist Yves Lavigne wrote: "No one knows how many police officers in all levels of law enforcement were recruited by Inspector Savoie to provide information to drug smugglers and sabotage investigations, or whether these moles are still in place. No one knows how case or informants have been compromised. Inspector Savoie had unlimited access to files and the heads of the world's criminal intelligence services. He kept more secrets in death than he did in life and his legacy may still haunt the RCMP today, as his hand-picked moles gnaw away at its effectiveness in the war against drug-rich criminals".