Clayton "Clay" Roueche (born May 31, 1975) is a Canadian gangster best known for founding the United Nations gang of Vancouver.
Early life
Roueche was born into an upper-middle-class family in Chilliwack. His family owned a scrapyard and recycling business that made a profit of $1 million per annum. Roueche grew up surrounded by Vietnamese Canadians and Laotian Canadians. He came to develop an Asian fetish as he was described as spending much of his time in Abbotsford's Vietnamtown where he loved: "...the fortunetellers he’d find there, grainy bootlegged kung-fu movies and Vietnamese girls". A Korean Canadian said of him: "Clay was never white. Maybe he was born white, but his soul was never white." Roueche loved karate and his childhood hero was Bruce Lee. Roueche's sister, Sherry, stated: "Clay was a popular guy growing up. But he didn’t have any big plans to, like, take over the world or anything."
As a high school student, Roueche frequently used drugs. He was described as a rambunctious and adventuresome youth who loved camping by the Fraser River and underage drinking in local bars, which he entered with false identity cards. Roueche did not wish to follow his father into the scrap business as his father recalled: "If we went out to eat after work, he’d sometimes refuse to get out of the car, because he wouldn’t go into a restaurant looking dirty". After Roueche graduated from high school in 1993, he chose not to go to university, and instead worked at a variety of sales jobs in the Fraser river valley. He was first arrested in 1994 after he was seen visiting the home of a drug dealer, but was not charged. Rouche opened up a restaurant, which failed. In 1997, Roueche met James Coulter, who became his best friend. Roueche had connections through his Lao Canadian girlfriend with various Asian organized crime figures in Vancouver, and soon began to sell drugs to Coutler and his friends.
Roueche began to work for a Vietnamese organized crime figure known as Vu. Roueche came to see Vu as a surrogate father, saying in 2013: "He was the type of guy who did what he said he’d do, and I respected that. He wasn’t a paper tiger." Roueche saw Vu as his dai lo (Cantonese for "big brother"). Vu introduced Roueche to Buddhism. Roueche came to be fascinated by the Japanese concept of kaizen (continual improvement), and under the influence of Buddhism believed he was a reincarnated samurai. Roueche began to sell drugs for Vu, which made him a profit of about $1,000 per day. Roueche was typical of the gangsters in the Lower Mainland in coming from a middle class family with loving parents, which was not the norm in the rest of Canada where the gangsters tended to come from working class families and broken homes.
Drug dealer
The organized crime scene in the Lower Mainland was dominated by the Hells Angels, who had a whites only admission policy, and engaged in monopolistic practices that led to high prices for illegal drugs. Rouche and Coulter founded a multi-cultural gang in opposition to the Hells Angels. The United Nations gang was founded on May 25, 1997. The name United Nations was coined at a party hosted by Roueche in Richmond when somebody commented upon the racially diverse crowd by saying: "What the fuck is this, a United Nations meeting?" Roueche was greatly influenced by Eastern mysticism and chose as the slogan for his gang "Honor, Loyalty, Respect", which all members were expected to have tattooed on their bodies, usually in Chinese characters. Likewise, he expected members to wear hoodies covered with Asian imagery such as tigers and Chinese dragons; to learn and practice mixed martial arts; and to engage in rituals he devised based upon Shinto and Buddhist rituals he had read about.