A bit more investigation into the Pivot Airlines flight raises more questions than answers; for those who believe that the Dominican government simply held a group of innocent international travelers (
after recovering two hundred ten kg of cocaine, worth twenty five million dollars, secreted on the aircraft).
The flight was chartered by John Strudwick, CFO of Trust Capital (a real estate company), based in Toronto. Trust Capital booked two flights to the Dominican Republic, with Pivot Airlines. Trust Capital paid two hundred thousand dollars to charter those two flights. It was the second flight on which the drugs were found and the crew and passengers detained.
Trust Capital does not exist. Neither does John Strudwick. Strudwick identified an employee on the drug flight: Sheldon Poirier. Poirier was cited as the head of Trust Capital's Edmonton and Calgary residential development projects.
Sheldon Poirier was convicted in 2020 of drug trafficking and possession. Interesting coincidence. Three other passengers on that flight also had recent convictions for drug trafficking. Also interesting coincidences. Two of those men had been represented by the same attorney in their drug cases; that attorney, when questioned, said he didn't know that Poirier, or any of the other passengers on the flight, were employees of Trust Capital. Same attorney represents both men for drug trafficking and possession (convictions), also represented the passengers on the flight, chartered by Trust Capital, but didn't know any of them were employees of Trust Capital? Seems unusual.
Another passenger who flew down on Pivot, but who left the Dominican Republic and flew back on his own a few days prior to the drug discovery, also said he knew nothing about Trust Capital (the company that chartered the flight). The passengers, employees of Trust Capital don't know who the non-existent company is. The attorney that represents the passengers doesn't know who Trust Capital is. The passenger who was flown to the DR by Trust Capital and then vanished before everyone else was detained, knows nothing about Trust Capital. Multiple passengers had recent possession and trafficking convictions in Canada, and were represented by the same attorney who was hired to represent the rest of the passengers. And the flight was chartered by a man who doesn't exist, working for a company that doesn't exist. Nothing unusual about that, is there?
https://www.ctvnews.ca/w5/w5-exposes...d=7n01t83bzu4j
At Punta Cana, the drugs were transported to the airplane by an airport truck; the process was caught on camera. The crew initially discovered the bags by a cockpit door annunciator. Authorities arrived, identified four bags and removed them, and cleared the airplane to depart. Subsequently, the crew identified more bags in the same compartment, when the crew was unable to close the compartment door, raising the question of how a search failed to identify the additional bags of cocaine, and whether some had been removed, and others intentionally left behind. DR autorities removed four bags, half the total cocaine load, but left four bags behind. That's not suspicious. Or is it?
Cocaine Cargo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-ycQBte06M
Cocaine Cargo II (parts 1 and 2):
https://www.ctvnews.ca/w5?lid=yvlpecyhdrm8