Jailed Canadian tied to El Chapo
Former Toronto resident fighting extradition from Caribbean island to United States
A Canadian accused of working with Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo” Guzman is sitting in a Caribbean jail cell furiously fighting extradition to the U.S.
Mykhaylo Koretskyy — also known as “Russian Mike” and “Cobra” — is alleged to have shipped millions of dollars in cocaine to Canada through his links with El Chapo, the world’s biggest drug kingpin since Colombia’s Pablo Escobar.
Koretskyy, 43, was hauled into custody when he stepped off a plane in the Dutch territory of Curaçao on Jan. 3, 2018, after authorities on the island were alerted by a “red notice” from Interpol.
Since then, he has been battling to halt his extradition to the U.S., where he has been charged in a 2014 cocaine smuggling indictment by the United States District Court in New York.
A brief subject line in an order to unseal that indictment lists El Chapo as the Canadian’s alleged co-conspirator. Jury selection in Guzman’s long-awaited Brooklyn trial starts today.
Though Koretskyy’s indictment was issued on Jan. 23, 2014, it was only unsealed on Jan. 5, 2018, two days after his Curaçao arrest. Initial media reports indicated the Ukrainian-born Canadian citizen had been living in Toronto. But why he was only detained this year remains a mystery.
The indictment contains no other mention of El Chapo, but Koretskyy stands accused of working, between October 2008 and January 2014, with “others known and unknown” to commit an offence “outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.”
Sources briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, tell the National Post that Koretskyy has long been believed by the U.S. to be a major drug trafficker working with El Chapo and others.
He is suspected of moving cocaine from the U.S. into Canada by concealing it in cargo trucks and the evidence against him is reported to include secret telephone tapings and information provided by traffickers co-operating with U.S. authorities.
His indictment says the substance involved was “five kilograms and more” of cocaine, but sources say the drugs Koretskyy is suspected of transporting were in the hundreds of kilograms. With one kilogram of cocaine worth around $30,000 at wholesale and far more at street level in the U.S., such loads would be worth multiple millions of dollars.
As well as Guzman, among those listed in the unsealing order with Koretskyy is Hildebrando Alexander Cifuentes Villa, known as “Alex,” who hails from a notorious Colombian crime family with long ties to Escobar’s Medellin crime syndicate and its successor groups. He was detained in Mexico in 2014.
The indictment says Koretskyy and others distributed drugs “knowing that such substance would be unlawfully imported into the United States, or into waters within a distance of 12 miles of the coast,” and that the U.S. is also seeking a forfeiture of his illegally gained assets.
To Canadian authorities, though, Russian Mike appears to be a ghost.
Police in Toronto say Koretskyy has not come to their attention, while police in Vancouver say they “don’t have any information to share.” RCMP will only say they are aware of media reports about his detention.
In court documents, Koretskyy is listed as having the same lawyer as El Chapo, Jeffrey Lichtman. Lichtman spoke to the National Post in recent days about Guzman but did not respond to numerous followup calls and emails about Koretskyy.
The Manhattan lawyer gained fame for working for Mafia scion John “Junior” Gotti, who faced murder conspiracy and fraud charges but avoided prison after a mid2000s trial. He says the Guzman case is more complicated than the Gotti affair, but “similar in the way that the jury and the public are predisposed to thinking my client is guilty.”
El Chapo was extradited to the U.S. in January 2017 following his third capture and second prison break since 1993. The allegations in his 17-count indictment involve drug trafficking, $14 billion in criminal proceeds and multiple killings, spanning from the late 1980s to 2014.
According to defence filings, discovery in El Chapo’s case includes 330,000 pages of documents and “tens of thousands of recorded communications.” Seventeen new murder conspiracies have been added, the documents state, almost doubling the initial number. For a trial that might take four months, Lichtman and his defence partner Eduardo Balarezo insist they haven’t been given enough time.
“He has a very strong legal defence team, and is clearly working all angles to challenge the case they’re making against him,” says David Shirk, a University of San Diego professor who specializes in Mexican organized crime. “But the evidence seems fairly damning. The number of options the prosecution has to pursue in evidence and testimony is really overwhelming.”
Lichtman and Balarezo may end up cross-examining any number of prosecution witnesses; estimates on how many may be summoned range from more than a dozen to 40. Among the possible prosecution witnesses, Chicago twins Pedro and Margarito Flores are perhaps the most intriguing.
The brothers ran a heroin and cocaine distribution operation in the Windy City from 1998, working with Mexico’s Sinaloa and Beltrán-Leyva cartels from May 2005. In November 2008, they handed themselves in to U.S. marshals and turned on their former partners in exchange for reduced sentences.
Both are now in witness protection and would have good reason to not want to face El Chapo. Their father was murdered in Mexico in 2009, reportedly as a direct result of the brothers’ snitching.
Koretskyy is not expected to be extradited by the time Guzman goes before Judge Brian Cogan and the jury.
The U.S. formalized a request for his extradition on April 24 and Curaçao agreed to it in May. But because the island is a Dutch territory, Koretskyy has appealed that decision to the Supreme Court of the Netherlands. The process is said to normally take up to nine months.
He has a very strong legal defence team, and is clearly working all angles.”
David Shirk