Washington (AFP) – Seven people linked to a Canadian former Olympic snowboarder turned alleged drug kingpin have been arrested in Canada, including his lawyer, officials said Wednesday. Ryan Wedding, 44, who is believed to be hiding out in Mexico, is wanted by the United States on drug and murder charges and is on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list.
The State Department announced on Wednesday that it was increasing the reward for information leading to Wedding’s arrest to $15 million from $10 million. FBI Director Kash Patel described Wedding at a press conference in Washington as a “modern day iteration of Pablo Escobar,” the notorious Colombian drug lord who died in 1993. “(Wedding) is responsible for engineering a narco-trafficking and narco-terrorism program that we have not seen in a long time,” Patel said.
US and Canadian officials said seven people connected to Wedding’s cocaine smuggling operation were arrested in Canada on Tuesday, including his lawyer, Deepak Paradkar, and the United States was seeking their extradition. Paradkar, 62, of Ontario, allegedly told Wedding that if he killed a witness in a pending criminal case against him, the case would go away. “His lawyer told him, ‘If you kill this witness, the case would be dismissed,'” Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli said. The witness was shot five times in the head and killed in January 2025 at a restaurant in Medellin, Colombia, Essayli said.
Also arrested in Canada was Gursewak Singh Bal, 31, of Ontario, founder of a website known as “The Dirty News.” Bal was allegedly paid to post a photograph of the slain witness on the website “so that the victim could be located and killed,” the Justice Department said. Michael Duheme, commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said the arrests were part of a coordinated law enforcement action dubbed “Operation Giant Slalom.”
Wedding competed for Canada in snowboarding at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, finishing 24th in the parallel giant slalom. “Fugitive Ryan Wedding remains one of the top threats to Canadian public safety,” Duheme said.
Wedding, whose aliases include “El Jefe,” “Giant” and “Public Enemy,” is accused of shipping hundreds of millions of dollars of cocaine from Colombia through Mexico to the United States and Canada. FBI agent Akil Davis said Wedding is being protected by the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico and is “extremely dangerous.” “He’s extremely violent and he’s extremely wealthy,” Davis said.
In addition to the seven Canadians arrested on Tuesday, three other people linked to the January 2025 murder of the witness in Colombia were taken into custody, officials said.
© 2024 AFP
