Published on - 2/1/2008
A ROUTINE TRAFFIC stop has sparked a widening probe of a debit-card fraud that Toronto police suspect may have funnelled funds to the outlawed Tamil Tigers.
After a motorist failed to halt at a stop sign Monday, police in east end Toronto searched his rented vehicle and found plastic cards carrying the debit data of bank customers in the United Kingdom.
Now four men face multiple charges of attempting to loot bank accounts in Britain.
Two of them were visitors from Britain and the other two were Toronto residents, a all of Sri Lankan origin.
Detective Scott Whittemore says that in visits to two homes, police discovered calendars and posters promoting and Sri Lanka's insurgent Tamil Tigers, a group outlawed in Canada.
While voicing support for the group is not an offence, providing it with material support has been illegal since April of last year.
Police are investigating whether any of the four men has financial ties to the Tigers.
Such connections are always hard to prove, Whittemore said Wednesday. In March of last year, a report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch went further than merely asserting that Canadian money is fuelling the insurgency.
The report stated that in Toronto, Tamils acting on behalf of the Tigers have committed widespread extortion and intimidation against their compatriots. \"Families were typically pressed for between $2,500 and $5,000,\" the report's authors wrote, \"while some businesses were asked for up to $100,000.'\"
