Douglas Todd: Sam Cooper’s exposé of corruption in Canada tops bestseller list
Douglas Todd, 18 June 2021
It’s not every day a reporter who has worked for The Vancouver Sun and The Province writes a book that hits No. 1 in sales on Amazon.ca and continues to hover near the top.
But that is what dogged journalist Sam Cooper has achieved with his thrilling and deeply disturbing exposé of what he rightly calls the “mind-blowing” connections among organized crime, casinos, the Chinese Communist Party, real estate, money laundering, offshore billionaires and Canadian politicians.
Connecting the dots like no other journalist or researcher before him, Cooper’s devastating book, Wilful Blindness: How a Network of Narcos, Tycoons and CCP Agents Infiltrated the West, took root in 2009 when he began doing investigative work for The Province.
That’s where Cooper crossed paths with Fabian Dawson, another shoe-leather journalist who had broken numerous stories about Asian criminals buying copious amounts of prime Vancouver real estate. Dawson, raised in Malaysia, had “international sources and understanding of politics and business in Asia,” Cooper writes, which contributed to his blockbuster accounts linking Asian triads to some of Canada’s top business leaders and elected officials.
