Mark Bourque was a Royal Canadian Mounted Police

Royal Canadian Mounted Police

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police , literally ‘Royal Gendarmerie of Canada’; colloquially known as The Mounties, and internally as ‘The Force’) is the national police force of Canada, and one of the most recognized of its kind in the world. It is unique in the world as a national, federal,...

 officer killed while working for the United Nations

United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

 in Cité Soleil

Cité Soleil

Cité Soleil is an extremely impoverished and densely populated commune located in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area in Haiti. Cité Soleil originally developed as a shanty town and grew to an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 residents, the majority of whom live in extreme poverty...

, Haiti

Haiti

Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...

 on Tuesday, December 20, 2005.

RCMP career

Prior to his mission in Haiti, Bourque had been an RCMP officer for approximately 35 years. He was stationed in the province of Quebec

Quebec

Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

, where he started work in Granby

Granby, Quebec

Granby is a city in southwestern Quebec, located east of Montreal. The population as of the Canada 2006 Census was 47,637. Granby is the seat of La Haute-Yamaska Regional County Municipality. It is the fifth most populated city in Montérégie after Longueuil, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Brossard and...

 and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu before moving on to Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

. During his career, he was most noted for his work in money laundering

Money laundering

Money laundering is the process of disguising illegal sources of money so that it looks like it came from legal sources. The methods by which money may be laundered are varied and can range in sophistication. Many regulatory and governmental authorities quote estimates each year for the amount...

. In 1986, he became heavily involved in a case involving the alleged Mafia

Mafia

The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...

 crime family Cuntrera-Caruana

Cuntrera-Caruana Mafia family

The Cuntrera-Caruana Mafia clan is part of the Sicilian Mafia or Cosa Nostra and held a key position in the illicit drug trade and money laundering for Cosa Nostra in the 1980s and 1990s. The Italian press baptized the clan as 'The Rothschilds of the Mafia' or 'the bankers of Cosa Nostra'.Italian...

, headed by Alfonso Caruana

Alfonso Caruana

Alfonso Caruana is a member of the Sicilian Mafia and was the head of the Sicilian Cuntrera-Caruana family branch in Canada. He acquired Canadian nationality in 1978....

, from Siculiana

Siculiana

Siculiana is a town and comune in the province of Agrigento, Sicily, southern Italy, 13 km. west from the provincial capital Agrigento.-History:...

; which lasted for several years. According to CTV News, "At the time, money-laundering laws were non-existent in Canada. However, Bourque's work pushed the Canadian government to put money-laundering provisions into the Criminal Code." http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20051222/bourque_update_051222/20051222?hub=Canada. Bourque retired from the RCMP in 2002.