U.S. lays more charges, ups reward for Ryan Wedding, Canadian Olympian turned alleged drug lord
CBC
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI director Kash Patel outlined their case on Wednesday against Ryan Wedding, a former Team Canada Olympian who they say became one of the most powerful drug lords in the world.
Bondi and Patel held a news conference in Washington, D.C., alongside RCMP Commissioner Michael Duheme.
Wedding, an alleged Canadian drug lord who competed for Canada as a snowboarder at the 2002 Olympic Games in Utah, is listed as one of the FBI's 10 most-wanted fugitives.
Bondi said the U.S. Department of Justice is charging Wedding with "two additional counts of witness tampering and intimidation, money laundering and drug trafficking."
"He controls one of the most prolific and violent drug trafficking organizations in this world," Bondi said.
Wedding is accused of orchestrating the murder of a federal witness through the use of a now-deleted website called "The Dirty News," where photographs of the witness and his wife were displayed to locate him, according to an indictment unsealed Wednesday.
The witness, whom Radio-Canada sources identified as Jonathan Acebedo-Garcia, was gunned down in a restaurant in Medellin, Colombia, before he could testify against Wedding.
The U.S. State Department is offering a reward of up to $15 million US for Wedding's capture, up from $10 million.
Wedding is responsible for importing 60 metric tonnes a year into Los Angeles via semi-trailer trucks from Mexico, Bondi said.
She added that over the course of the investigation, more than 35 people have been indicted.
More than 2,000 kilograms of cocaine, numerous weapons, about $3.2 million in cryptocurrency and $13 million in physical assets were recovered.
FBI director Kash Patel likened Wedding to a “modern-day iteration” of Pablo Escobar and Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and implored citizens to report information they may have on the accused.
Patel said Wedding is responsible for “engineering a narco-trafficking and narco-terrorism program that we have not seen in a long time.”
He added that the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI will “lead the effort to go out there and make sure that these animals are brought to justice.”
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