Inmate was headache in the past
Leclerc guards felt ‘The Millionaire’ was running prison wing in 1990s
Correctional Service Canada will no doubt be keeping a close eye on Raynald Desjardins as he heads back for his second stint inside a federal penitentiary.
His first sentence, a 15-year prison term that he began serving in 1994, involved incidents that have become legend in organized crime circles. His actions even raised serious questions in the House of Commons about who was actually running a penitentiary in Laval while he served time there in 1995.
Desjardins received his first federal sentence, on Oct. 24, 1994, after pleading guilty to being part of a conspiracy to bring up to 5,000 kilograms of cocaine into Canada. During an RCMP investigation dubbed Project Jaggy the Mounties followed Desjardins closely as he appeared to be the key person connecting leaders in the Hells Angels and the Montreal Mafia as they arranged to smuggle large quantities of the drug together. In the investigation Desjardins was seen holding meetings with powerful Hells Angels like Maurice (Mom) Boucher and was in frequent contact with Mob boss Vito Rizzuto. At one point in the investigation, another Hells Angel involved in the conspiracy told an informant that Desjardins was in charge of everything and had financed the complicated operation.
This came as little surprise to the RCMP as, in 1986, a police intelligence report had already described Desjardins as “the supplier of drugs for the (Mafia) in Montreal” and someone who had been “strongly involved in drug trafficking in Montreal since at least 1980.” His ties to the Mafia were already established during the 1970s after Joseph Di Maulo, a Mafioso once considered an influential figure in the Cotroni organization, married Desjardins’ sister. In November 1973, police took note of how Desjardins, barely 20 years old at the time, served as Di Maulo’s driver when the Mafioso travelled from Montreal to New York to take part in an important meeting with the heads of a Mafia clan based in Brooklyn.
During the summer of 1993, the first shipment probed in Project Jaggy — 750 kilograms of cocaine — was placed on a fishing vessel called the Fortune Endeavour in Venezuela. The narcotic was sealed in plastic pipes and the plan called for the smugglers to toss it overboard just before they would dock in Canada. The plan failed miserably as the Fortune Endeavour ran into trouble shortly after it entered Canadian waters, in August 1993, and its captain had to ask for help from the Canadian Coast Guard unit based in Halifax. The cocaine was dumped before help arrived but was left in much deeper waters than the smugglers had planned for. The Hells Angels dispatched an underling who had training as a scuba driver to recover the pipes but arrests were made in Project Jaggy before he could locate them. The Canadian Armed Forces had to use special equipment to recover the cocaine in November 1994.
Parole board decisions from Desjardins’s first sentence describe how on the first day he arrived at Leclerc Institution, a former federal penitentiary in Laval, he shook hands with the warden and said, in front of several other inmates, that everything would be OK now that he was there. Other inmates referred to him as “the Millionaire” and it soon appeared to guards at Leclerc that Desjardins was running the 4AB wing of the penitentiary. Within weeks, inmates who got along with Desjardins were refusing to be transferred out of the wing.
Within a year, in 1995, the federal government had to order an investigation into how Desjardins arranged to have the aging outdoor jogging track at Leclerc renovated and appeared to have paid for the work himself. The work was done by a contractor who had already done work on Desjardins’ home. The warden agreed with the project on the understanding the work would be paid for through an inmates’ committee, but it was believed that Desjardins assumed most of the cost to gain influence among other inmates.
That same year, Desjardins was investigated after allegations surfaced that he had ordered two fellow inmates to attack another named William Fisher. Desjardins was never charged for the severe beating Fisher received in April 1995, but Corrections Service Canada had information the conflict involved Desjardins’ refusal to allow him to bring drugs into the wing.
By the time Desjardins made his first appearance before the Parole Board of Canada in 1997 he had also been investigated for allegedly trying to kill another fellow inmate by poisoning his food and for another plot “to poison penitentiary personnel with PCP that was supposed to be mixed into (their) food,” according to the summary of a parole board decision.
Desjardins was seen holding meetings with powerful Hells Angels like Maurice (Mom) Boucher.