MOUNTIE BLAMES BOSS FOR LEAKS

Ordered To Sell Police Drug Data Judge Is Told

VILA FRANCA DE XIRA, Portugal - Former Mountie Jorge Leite admitted
yesterday that he sold RCMP information to drug lords on numerous
occasions but insisted it was all part of his job.

Leite, a former drug squad officer with the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police in Montreal, said he took payoffs totalling more than $30,000
in an attempt to infiltrate the Cali drug cartel.

He said he received between $1,000 and $2,000 for every piece of
information he furnished from police computers.

Describing the information he gave as innocuous, Leite said he turned
over every penny he got from the drug dealers to Inspector Claude
Savoie, who, Leite claims, was overseeing the clandestine operation.

Savoie, who headed the Montreal drug squad at the time, shot himself
in the head with his service revolver in 1992 as internal affairs
officers waited outside his office to question him about his own
alleged mob connection.

The RCMP later said Savoie was on the take from another drug cell in
Montreal and had received about $200,000 in payoffs.

Leite said he sold the information to Ines Barbosa - police describe
her as the Godmother of the Cali Cartel in Montreal - through his best
friend, Luis Lopes, a convicted cocaine dealer.

``Everything I did, I did on orders and knowledge of my chief,'' Leite
said on the first day of his trial for corruption and credit-card fraud.

``I had specific instructions from my supervisor to infiltrate the
group,'' Leite told a courtroom packed with his relatives and Canadian
media.

Despite the large bribes he received, Leite said, he never got
receipts from Savoie, or logged the payoffs in any police books.

Leite fled to Portugal in May, 1991, amid allegations he was the mole
who had sabotaged at least two large RCMP drug investigations
involving millions.

Savoie himself ordered the investigation of Leite after getting a tip
that someone in the squad was dirty, the court was told yesterday.

These revelations came on the first day of Leite's trial, a marathon
12-hour day before a three-judge panel that didn't believe in coffee
breaks and worked until 9:30 p.m. after a quick lunch at McDonald's.

While admitting to the bribes, Leite denied that his villa and condo
in the trendy Algarve were also payoffs.

He said he paid for the house with his hard-earned money, adding that
he and his wife, Maria, were making about $150,000 a year when they
decided to go back to Portugal.

But Inspector Yves Roussel testified his investigation showed Leite
was making only about $56,000 a year as a junior officer and his wife
$16,000 as a part-time nurse.

Asked by Judge Jose Duarte Martins to explain his hasty departure from
Canada, Leite said working for the RCMP had left him ``feeling
oppressed.''