EX-CUSTOMS AGENT PLEADS GUILTY TO ROLE IN COKE-SMUGGLING CAPER

Could Face Decade In Prison: Following Admission, Trial Of Co-Accused Goes
Ahead In Montreal Courthouse

A former customs agent is facing the possibility of a 10-year prison term
after pleading guilty to taking part in a conspiracy to smuggle cocaine
into Canada by recruiting another agent.

The guilty plea came just as Omar Riahi, 33, and four other people were
set to begin their trial at the Montreal courthouse in a case related to
Project Colisee, the joint police investigation into the Montreal Mafia
and its associates.

Riahi worked briefly as a customs agent in 2004, but was employed as a
military police officer in Halifax when he became a suspect in Project
Colisee in August 2005.

Yesterday, Riahi admitted to corrupting Nancy Cedeno, 34, a Canada Border
Services Agency agent, to facilitate the drug smuggling efforts of
Giuseppe Torre, a man with ties to the Montreal Mafia, and another person,
an alleged drug trafficker who has yet to be tried in Project Colisee.
Torre, 37, pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges this year and is
serving a 14-year sentence.

Crown prosecutor Alexandre Dalmau told Quebec Court Judge Claude Millette
that he will seek a 10-year prison term for Riahi.

Despite the guilty plea, the trial of three co-accused - Cedeno and two
people alleged to be couriers, Jean-Marie Fritz Balmir, 38, and Julie
Chateauneuf-Fleury, 27 - went ahead at the Montreal courthouse.

Dalmau provided Millette with a brief summary of the evidence the
prosecution intends to present in the coming weeks. He said Riahi
recruited Cedeno - who was working at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau
International Airport - because she could supply stamped customs
declaration forms. Dalmau said the forms could be used by couriers
bringing kilos of cocaine in suitcases on flights from the Caribbean to
avoid being searched.

The prosecutor also described how the system ran into a series of problems.

In one case, a man named Eddy Dorsica was arrested in Port au Prince,
Haiti, while trying to board a flight to Montreal. Police there found that
he was carrying nine kilograms of cocaine and a stamped declaration form
that was later traced to Cedeno.

In another instance, the courier backed out and left a suitcase carrying
cocaine unclaimed at the airport. One of the drug smugglers was later
overheard on wiretaps trying to see if Cedeno could get the suitcase out
of the airport.

Another botched attempt to import drugs allegedly involved one of the
co-accused on trial.

In April 2006, Chateauneuf-Fleury is alleged to have attempted to import
30 kilos of cocaine from Venezuela in a suitcase in exchange for $30,000.

The people behind the plan were scared off by a drug bust that took place
at an airport in Venezuela the same day Chateauneuf-Fleury was supposed to
fly back to Montreal.

When she arrived at the airport in Dorval, she was told to forget about
claiming the suitcase.

Investigators at the Dorval airport watched as she tore up a piece of
paper, placed the pieces in an empty container of Pringles chips and then
tossed it into a garbage can. When they recovered the discarded chip
container, investigators found a pre-stamped declarations form inside.