The leader of B.C.'s notorious United Nations gang has been sentenced to 30 years in a U.S. prison on drug and money-laundering charges.
Clay Roueche, the 35-year-old Abbotsford man behind the multi-national drug-dealing organization, was sentenced in a Seattle courtroom on Tuesday -- the second time he has been sentenced on the charges stemming from his 2008 arrest in Texas.
He was originally sentenced in December 2009, but an appeals court judge ordered that U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik clarify the evidence behind his decision.
At Tuesday's hearing, Lasnik decided to uphold Roueche's original sentence of 30 years in jail and five years of supervised release.
"The closer I look at the crimes, the more I am convinced that 30 years is the just and appropriate prison term," Lasnik said.
Roueche pleaded guilty to the charges against him in April 2009, when he admitted that, beginning four years earlier, he had plotted to export cocaine from the U.S. to Canada while importing B.C. marijuana south of the border.
In their sentencing memo, prosecutors wrote that Roueche "oversaw the movement of tens of thousands of pounds of marijuana, thousands of kilograms of cocaine, and millions of U.S. dollars through several states and at least three North American countries."
The three-year investigation into the UN gang by the U.S. Attorney's Office saw the seizure of 2,169 pounds of Canadian marijuana, 335 kilograms of cocaine, $2,033,388 in U.S. currency, two pounds of crack cocaine, four pounds of methamphetamine and five firearms.
Prosecutors described Roueche as the "public face" of the "violent, quasi-corporate" UN gang.
They went on to say that he employed private airplanes, helicopters and semi-trailers to create a secret network that he planned to eventually extend to Asia and South America.
"The group used guns, threats and violence to keep its contracted workers and gang members in line and to ensure that no one informed on the group's activities," the prosecutors' memo said.
