Claude Savoie (policeman)
Joseph Philippe Claude Savoie (1943 – 21 December 1992) was a Canadian career policeman and senior anti-drug officer in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), while simultaneously a co-conspirator with the West End Gang of Montreal and its leader Allan "The Weasel" Ross. Savoie committed suicide in his office at the RCMP headquarters in Ottawa after his links to organized crime were exposed by investigative journalists from The Fifth Estate television program. The exposure of Savoie shattered the Canadian people's image of the Mounties as an incorruptible police force and was described by the Canadian scholar Steven Schneider as "the biggest case of police corruption in Canada for years". Police career Savoie was born in Montreal and joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in 1965. The French-Canadian Savoie worked as the RCMP's liaison officer at the Canadian embassy in Paris until 1986. In 1986, he had become one of the most senior officers working in the RCMP's anti-drug squad in Montreal. Upon his return to Montreal, Savoie experienced financial problems. In 1987, reflecting the new policy of glasnost ("openness") in the Soviet Union, Savoie took part in a joint Soviet-Canadian investigation of a drug trafficking ring concerning the vory