Controversial Canadian YouTuber Hicham Jerando, already known to Quebec courts and previously examined in the Western Standard, is now at the centre of a criminal file of an entirely different magnitude..ROBSON: Canada jails YouTuber for defying court — not for inciting terror.A continuing stream of leaked private communications shows him operating from Canadian territory while maintaining relationships with people embedded in Morocco’s narcotics trade, using intermediaries to identify and pressure targets, helping traffickers act against competitors, directing payments through people abroad, and participating in arrangements connected to migrant smuggling through Turkey.The material comes from a series of leaks released by a group calling itself Atlas Hacks. The group obtained access to Jerando’s private digital communications and began publishing recorded calls, messages, and exchanges with his contacts.The disclosures have since opened an unusually detailed window into the people supplying Jerando with information and the relationships operating behind his public platforms. By the time of writing, around ten releases had focused on his dealings with drug traffickers and their intermediaries, and the publication of new material was continuing.The recordings reveal a method that matters far more than any individual conversation. Some potential targets are identified through intermediaries who gather information about people connected to the drug trade, including details about their activities and families, before passing that material to Jerando. His platforms then transform it into accusations presented to a large online audience under the banner of exposing corruption or criminality. Once the target has been subjected to sustained pressure, direct contact or mediation can open the way to a financial negotiation over stopping the campaign or removing the material.The same machinery can be used in the opposite direction. People operating within narcotics networks feed Jerando names, photographs, and information about competitors they want damaged. The leaked exchanges show figures from the drug trafficking world supplying material for campaigns against rivals and discussing the financial interests surrounding those attacks. Jerando’s platform therefore becomes more than a source of commentary on organized crime. It can be used as an instrument within the commercial rivalries of the drug trade itself..Intermediaries give that system flexibility and distance. The person gathering information does not have to be the person negotiating with the target, while the individual handling money can be different again. Jerando remains in Canada, where he controls the platform and the decision to publish, continue or remove the damaging material, while much of the collection, mediation, and payment activity takes place through people abroad.The dealings involving Reda Al-Amadi, a Moroccan drug trafficker who had previously served a prison sentence, illustrate this method. After Jerando targeted Al-Amadi and members of his family online, an intermediary known as Rachid Al-Radi, or “Rachid the Sahrawi,” became involved in contacts with the family.A subsequent leaked conversation records Jerando dealing directly with Al-Amadi and telling him that he was expected to make a financial contribution “like the others.” Other exchanges show Al-Radi gathering information about potential targets and discussing the possibility of identifying more prominent figures who could later be subjected to similar campaigns.That is only one side of the operation. In another strand, Adel Madhoub, known as “Amsterdam” and identified in the leaks as a figure involved in international narcotics trafficking, supplied Jerando with photographs and information about competing traffickers and sought campaigns against them. Jerando, in turn, asked for more intelligence about other important figures in the drug trade.The relationship extended beyond digital attacks. When Madhoub complained of being pursued by law enforcement in Casablanca, he sought Jerando’s intervention. Jerando responded by claiming that he had contacts within Morocco’s foreign intelligence environment whom he could approach when people faced security pressure. The exchange exposes another part of his method.Jerando used claims of privileged access and influence inside Moroccan security institutions as a false sales pitch to attract people from the drug trade, persuade them that he could shield them from law enforcement, and strengthen his position when bargaining with them. At the same time, those claims served his wider narrative by portraying Moroccan security agencies as corrupt institutions whose actions could supposedly be manipulated through personal connections..Other recordings show the financial relationship moving well beyond payment for the removal of a video. In exchanges involving Mustapha El-Harouachi, a broker and intermediary connected to narcotics and smuggling circles, Jerando’s platform was discussed as a tool for weakening competing traffickers. The recordings describe Jerando’s compensation in terms of a percentage linked to the profits of smuggling operations after competitors had been targeted. That is a critical distinction because it ties the Canadian operator’s prospective financial return directly to the success of the underlying trafficking business.Another sequence exposes how the network keeps money away from Canada. Amine El Ghazoui, presented in the leaked material as involved in international drug trafficking, negotiated over publications concerning his father, Abdelouahed El Ghazoui. One arrangement involved 20 million Moroccan centimes, roughly $30,000 CDN, in return for removing content and ending references to the father and an area associated with his trafficking activity. The payment was not to be sent to Jerando in Canada but to an intermediary in Turkey.The significance of the relationship increased when a later leak revealed a direct conversation between Jerando and Abdelouahed El Ghazoui himself. El Ghazoui had been detained on July 30 in an investigation concerning suspected ramifications of the major international narcotics file widely known as the “Escobar of the Sahara” case. For a Canadian law enforcement agency, the important point is not the intricacy of the Moroccan case but the repeated appearance of a Canadian-based operator in communications with people situated deep inside serious narcotics investigations.Turkey is not simply a destination for money in these leaks. The recordings also expose a separate migrant smuggling dimension. Jerando is heard discussing the expectation that people benefiting from drug trafficking should contribute part of their proceeds to arrangements used to move migrants illegally from Turkey toward Europe, including Moroccans, Syrians, and other nationals. The same network therefore connects the collection and movement of money around drug trafficking relationships with an overseas infrastructure used for irregular migration.The Turkish intermediary identified in the material as Fouad Birkan Soustam becomes particularly important in this context. Payments can be directed to Turkey rather than to Jerando under his own name in Canada, while the same jurisdiction appears in conversations concerning migrant smuggling activity. This geographical separation is not an incidental detail. It illustrates how a Canadian operator can remain removed from the immediate collection and use of funds while directing arrangements across several countries.These narcotics disclosures also expand a Canadian file that had already become troubling. In July, we reported in the Western Standard how Mehdi Hijaouy, a dismissed former Moroccan intelligence employee wanted in a serious financial crime case, recruited Jerando for a malicious digital campaign operated from Canadian territory. Hijaouy supplied information and themes, influenced the choice of targets and helped direct the timing and content of publications designed to divert attention from his own criminal exposure..A separate set of leaked exchanges also contains Jerando referring to relationships with people he described as part of the Canadian mafia. That remark warrants considerably more attention now that his other communications place him inside relationships involving international drug traffickers and foreign intermediaries. What once might have been dismissed as another boast by a controversial online figure now sits within a much broader criminal context.Jerando’s record in Canada makes the absence of a comprehensive investigation still harder to understand. A Quebec Superior Court judgment found that he had presented himself as a whistleblower with investigators working for him while, in reality, he was amplifying claims from isolated sources without independent verification. That case resulted in an award of more than $164,000 CDN after a sustained defamatory campaign, while his repeated refusal to comply with other judicial orders has also resulted in prison sentences, fines, and community service for contempt of court.At the same time, Jerando has maintained a public business profile in Canada. Montreal business records have associated him with Jerando Fashion and Services J.T.D. The narcotics leaks do not establish that those businesses received proceeds from his dealings abroad, and that should not be assumed. They do, however, give Canadian investigators ample reason to examine whether his visible commercial ventures are entirely legitimate or whether any have also functioned as financial fronts, conduits, or laundering vehicles for illicit income belonging to him or to criminal partners in Canada or abroad.The question becomes unavoidable because the recordings show a person who understands how to direct money through intermediaries and foreign jurisdictions without placing his own name at the receiving end. Combined with his references to Canadian organized crime contacts, that should trigger an examination of his businesses, banking relationships, partners, transfers, and sources of income that goes far beyond the individual payments appearing in the leaked conversations.Moroccan law enforcement has meanwhile acted against people within its reach. Authorities have arrested individuals presented as operational intermediaries in Jerando’s wider network, including Mustapha El-Harouachi, who had previously been wanted by the National Judicial Police Brigade and later acknowledged mediation involving figures from the drug trade. Reporting following his arrest described his role in contacts between Jerando and people from narcotics circles. Another suspected relay was arrested while subject to 30 separate police and gendarmerie search notices, while other people appearing around the network remain wanted or under investigation.That is precisely where the Canadian failure becomes difficult to defend. Morocco can arrest the intermediaries located on its territory, but dismantling individual foreign nodes cannot end an operation whose central Canadian figure remains free to coordinate from Canada. If anything, the action taken by Moroccan investigators makes the absence of a visible Canadian criminal response more conspicuous..That imbalance has not gone unnoticed in Morocco. Journalists and commentators following the disclosures have increasingly questioned how such a volume of documented material involving a Canadian-based operator can continue to emerge without a visible response from Canadian law enforcement.Some have gone further, directing unusually sharp criticism at the RCMP and other Canadian authorities for what they see as an inexplicable failure to investigate conduct involving drug traffickers, cross-border financial arrangements and other serious criminal activity. The criticism has now reached the point of openly asking what Canadian authorities are waiting for before acting against Jerando and examining the financial and criminal network surrounding him.The contradiction is particularly damaging because the RCMP has publicly described Morocco as a trusted partner against exactly these crimes. In exclusive written answers to Hespress in June, the RCMP said it attaches “great importance” to its relationship with Morocco’s DGSN and DGST, confirmed that it has a liaison officer in Rabat and stated that cooperation between the two countries has already covered organized crime, drug trafficking, fraud, and economic crime. Most strikingly, the RCMP itself declared that “crime has no borders” and explained that its international officers assist foreign authorities on major investigations involving Canadian interests.That language rings increasingly hollow in the Jerando case. Ottawa is spending $1.7 billion CDN to strengthen the RCMP’s capacity against transnational organized crime, financial crime, and money laundering and says its current strategy is to “follow the money” and target the criminal profits sustaining organized drug networks. Yet foreign investigators and journalists continue to expose the activities, contacts, and money routes surrounding a Canadian operator while no comparable federal investigation has become visible to the Canadian public.At some point, institutional silence stops looking like an oversight and becomes a law-enforcement failure. The RCMP cannot credibly tell Canadians that transnational crime is a federal priority while allowing a Canadian YouTuber to remain active as recordings place him in dealings with narcotics traffickers, compensation linked to smuggling profits, foreign payment routes, and migrant smuggling arrangements. Nor can Canadian agencies continue to leave Moroccan authorities to pursue the overseas intermediaries while the person directing the operation benefits from the safety and infrastructure of Canada.The response should now be straightforward. Canadian authorities should open a comprehensive criminal and financial investigation into Jerando, obtain the relevant Moroccan investigative files, map his communications and contacts, follow the money through Turkey, and examine his businesses and Canadian organized crime connections. Morocco has already demonstrated that its services understand important parts of the network and are prepared to act against the people within their jurisdiction, making them the natural partner for a serious RCMP investigation.This is not a Moroccan controversy that happens to involve a Canadian citizen. It is a Canadian criminal problem whose operational branches extend into Morocco and Turkey. If the RCMP continues to watch while foreign authorities expose and dismantle pieces of a network coordinated from Canadian soil, the scandal will no longer be limited to Hicham Jerando.It will also belong to the Canadian law enforcement agencies that had the warnings, the partners, and the mandate to act, yet still turned a blind eye.Daniel Robson is an independent Canadian journalist specializing in extremism, organized crime, and public-safety policy.
