According to this blog post at Narcosphere, a former employee of FedEx Canada has filed a suit in Canada alleging retaliation based on his disclosure to Canadian Customs of various export irregularities by FedEx Canada. Documents filed in the litigation appear to reveal that, between May 2005 to April 2006, almost 20,000 exports by FedEx that required a Canadian export declaration, namely a form B13A, were shipped without that declaration. The plaintiff’s lawyers allege that this is approximately 20 percent of all exports that required a B13A and that, as a result, it is likely that some of these shipments involved sensitive export-controlled technology.

FedEx Canada appears to have had two major responses to these claims. The first, and not very convincing, response is that the failure to file the B13A was the customer’s fault and no FedEx’s fault. I don’t know how far that argument goes in Canada, but regular readers know that in the U.S. such an excuse not only wouldn’t make it out of the starting gate but would be shot to death in the stables. Their second argument has somewhat more force. Even if the B13As had been filed, there is no guarantee that this would have stopped any illegal exports of controlled-technology since devious exporters would have lied on their B13A declarations about the true contents of the exported package.

One U.S. Customs official who spoke with Narco News explains that even if all the proper paperwork is filed with an export shipment, that still does not guarantee an illegal shipment will be caught by Customs officials, in either the U.S. or Canada, since criminals lie on forms and the government “bureaucracy takes time to have the AM coffee, get up, and get going.”

Say what? Did this guy just admit that pretty much anything goes at the border until the Customs agents have their morning coffee? No wonder he didn’t want his name used!

NOTE: Blog posting will be light this week. I’m travelling on Wednesday to Arizona to give a presentation on economic sanctions and the Internet at GoDaddy’s annual registrar summit. I’ll be back on Friday and will try to do some catch up posts over the weekend.

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