Dealer who swore off crime is caught in dragnet

During the summer of 2005, Alain Charron told members of a parole board that he was "saturated" with living the life of a gangster and wanted nothing more to do with organized crime. At the time, Charron, 63, a Val Morin resident once suspected of being a hit man for the Dubois Gang, was serving a sentence for his role in a 27-tonne shipment of hashish seized in 1990 in a small fishing village in Nova Scotia. The drug seizure was considered a record in Canada for a single bust of its kind. On Wednesday, Charron and six other people were arrested by the RCMP and charged with smuggling several containers packed with hashish, totalling more than 43 metric tonnes, seized within the context of an investigation dubbed Project Celsius. Some containers were seized at the ports in Halifax and Montreal. Others were seized in Pakistan or while en route to Canada in Italy and Belgium before and after the Celsius investigation was initiated in 2010. The RCMP estimates the value of the hashish seized, which originated primarily from Pakistan, to be worth more than $860 million. The RCMP's C Division, based in Montreal, said the investigation was conducted with the help of police in Pakistan, Italy, Belgium and the U.S. According to a release issued by the RCMP, "such a large quantity of hashish could have supplied every resident of a city of 10,000 with a daily dose for more than 11 years." During the 1980s, Charron was charged with four murders but was acquitted in each case. Police suspected he carried out the gangland slayings for the Dubois Gang, a group of nine brothers who ran a series of rackets in western Montreal for decades. He has served time in prisons in the Bahamas, U.S. and Canada for drug trafficking. In 2005, when he was about to be released, after having served two-thirds of his sentence for the 27-tonne hashish shipment seized in Nova Scotia, Charron swore he was done with organized crime. But on Wednesday he was among seven men scheduled to appear before a judge at the Montreal courthouse to face charges of conspiracy, importing and possession of cannabis resin (hashish) for the purpose of trafficking. Two men - Lorne Beerworth, 47, of Greenfield Park, and Michael Harte, 49, of St. Constant - were also among the people arrested by the RCMP on Wednesday. Both are listed as members of the International Longshoremen's Association, a union based in the Port of Montreal. The RCMP described them as employees of the port. Beerworth, Harte and a third man, Patrice Bruyere, 38, of LaSalle, are charged with conspiring with Charron, and several other people, to smuggle hashish into Canada between March and November 2010. According to a release issued by the RCMP: "A number of irregularities were observed with respect to procedures and mandatory referrals, leading investigators to believe that employees performing various duties with companies at the Port of Montreal (the Cast terminal) were involved in the organization." The RCMP is still trying to locate Sylvain Parent, a 39-year-old man from Gatineau, as a suspect in the Celsius investigation. A resident of Slangenburg, Holland, Alexander William Van't Hoff, 64, is also listed as a suspect in an indictment filed at the Montreal courthouse on Wednesday.