38 HELD IN SWOOP ON CRIME NETWORK

Biggest Arrest Of East Europeans In N. America, Police
Claim

Toronto: Police have fired the opening salvo in what they say will be an
all-out war against organized crime in Ontario, targeting scores of
people accused of being members of an Eastern European organized crime
network.

In massive pre-dawn raids yesterday, more than 300 police officers
from agencies, including the Toronto, Peel and York Region forces, the
RCMP and the OPP, arrested 38 people and issued arrest warrants for 17
others.

It's the biggest arrest of its kind in North America, said RCMP
Superintendent Ben Soave, head of the Newmarket-based Combined Forces
Special Enforcement Unit, the multi-force agency that led the raids in
Toronto, Windsor, Ottawa and Montreal.

The arrests, he added, are ``a wake-up call, a reality check that
Canada - and especially the GTA and the Golden Horseshoe - are
becoming a sanctuary for organized criminals and for organized
criminal enterprise.''

Warnings issued

The raids, which targeted 20 homes in Greater Toronto as well as eight
locations in the other cities, were the result of a two-year probe
known as Project Osada II, which takes its name from the Russian word
for ``under siege.''

Police say the criminal network was centred in the Greater Toronto
Area and involved in a crime wave that swept four continents.

The network, police allege, was involved in credit-card fraud across
Ontario, importing the rave drug Ecstasy from the Netherlands, drug
trafficking from the Caribbean, immigration visa frauds in Eastern
Europe, smuggling fake diamonds from the United States, casino frauds
in Mississippi, the Bahamas, Aruba and the Dominican Republic, and the
manufacture of counterfeit credit cards that were distributed through
the United States, South America and Europe.

Project Osada II, police said, also led to the arrest of a gang member
who had links to two men - since arrested - who shot at a Niagara
Region police officer following a bank robbery four months ago in St.
Catharines.

RCMP Sergeant Glenn Hanna described the network as a domestic
organization operating in the Toronto area but committing offences
worldwide.

``We had crimes committed . . . in Russia, in the Ukraine, in the
United States and the Caribbean,'' Hanna said. ``The extent of their
criminal activity covers a big chunk of the world.''

Among those taken into custody following the early-morning raids
across Greater Toronto was a Richmond Hill man whom police allege is a
top-level boss in Eastern European organized crime.

The man, identified as Yury Dinaburgsky, 44, was arrested when a
heavily armed RCMP team burst into his Direzze Court home, in the
Major Mackenzie Dr. and Bathurst St. area.

Dinaburgsky faces charges of conspiring to possess and utter
counterfeit currency, conspiracy to traffic in cocaine, heroin and
marijuana, conspiracy to import and traffic in Ecstasy, and conspiracy
to commit fraud, forgery and uttering.

He is also charged, with seven others, with participating in the
activities of a criminal organization.

The eight, police say, are the first people in the Greater Toronto
Area to face this charge.

Dinaburgsky and his associates were taken to a North York police
station for fingerprinting and photographing before being transported
to a Scarborough court, where 17 were ordered held in custody until
Monday; 21 others were granted bail.

Most of the suspects arrested locally were picked up at addresses in
North York, Richmond Hill and Thornhill. The suspects arrested in
Windsor, Ottawa and Montreal were brought to Toronto on RCMP planes
for afternoon court appearances.

Project Osada II, the RCMP's Soave said, began two years ago, after
Russian crime boss Vyacheslav Sliva - the target of Project Osada I -
was deported from Canada in 1997.

The probe uncovered evidence that individuals from Eastern Europe had
become involved in every facet of criminal activity after coming to
Toronto, he said.

As well, investigators found, the gang had formed links with
traditional Mafia figures and Asian gangs.

The massive probe, which involved a host of agencies from Canada, the
U.S. and Russia, also shows police are working together to disrupt and
dismantle organized criminal networks, Soave said.

The lengthy investigation included officers from the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police, Toronto, York, Peel and Ontario Provincial Police
forces, Canada Immigration and the Criminal Intelligence Service of
Ontario.

Soave said police here also received co-operation from the U.S.
Customs Service, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI,
the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Organized
Crime Division of the Russian Ministry of the Interior.

Project Osada II is one of the most significant investigations into
Eastern European organized crime since the fall of the Soviet Union in
1991, and shows the commitment that police agencies in Canada have to
combatting these criminals, he said.

Soave said yesterday's arrests signify and reconfirm the ``commitment
and relentless effort to challenge this organized crime
enterprise.''

He credited his investigators, who put in thousands of extra hours
without pay, for smashing the ring.

During Project Osada I, police say, investigators learned Sliva had
established a criminal network in Toronto that had ties to top Russian
mobsters in New York, Tel Aviv and Moscow.

``This is a fallout of what Sliva came here to do,'' Soave said.
``He's left a legacy of organized crime in place.''

In the latest Osada probe, police say, investigators found an Eastern
European criminal kingpin had recruited a computer expert who designed
equipment capable of intercepting coded credit and debit card
information when transmitted from a customer at a store to a bank.

The criminal network then used the information to defraud banks and
credit card companies of millions of dollars, authorities say.

Among the seizures made by police yesterday was equipment capable of
recording confidential card information and secret personal
identification numbers.

``The allegations show the extent to which organized crime will go to
make a profit,'' Soave said.

According to police sources, the Eastern European organized criminals
also forged links with other mob groups to set up trafficking
operations involving heroin, cocaine and marijuana.

Among those arrested yesterday was a 32-year-old City of Toronto
computer programmer who police say built some of the high-tech
equipment the gang was using to obtain banking information to defraud
banks.

``Technical assistance and knowledge is essential to the criminal
organization's needs,'' the RCMP's Hanna noted.

A warrant was issued for Igor Kordysh, 36, an alleged member of the
criminal group who illegally remained in Canada after coming here on a
visitor's visa last year.

Kordysh, who is from the Ukraine, was to be one of 13 or 14 members of
a Ukrainian Tae Kwon Do team who entered a competition after seeing an
ad on the Internet in the summer of 1998, sources said.