Pubdate: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 Source: Comox Valley Record (CN BC) Copyright: 2005 Comox Valley Record Contact: http://www.comoxvalleyrecord.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/784 Author: Brennan Clarke Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?236 (Corruption - Outside U.S.) POLICE APPARENTLY STUMBLED ONTO IMPROPER DEALINGS It's been almost 18 months since police descended on the provincial legislature to collect evidence that resulted in criminal charges against ministerial assistants Dave Basi and Bob Virk. It's been almost twice that long since the start of an RCMP investigation into money-laundering drug-trafficking and organized crime that resulted in charges against Basi and seven other men from Ontario and B.C. And judging by the snail's pace of legal proceedings so far, it will be many more months before the public gets an accurate picture of the events that led to these charges. (Basi's arraignment hearing on the drug charges has been delayed until the end of June, as has his arraignment on fraud and breach of trusts charges stemming from the legislature raid.) There's a good chance the trials won't begin until next year and an even better chance that one will have to be completed before the other begins. Still, there's a fair amount of information in the public domain that, when viewed as a whole, offers plenty of insight into both the government-related charges and the investigation that led RCMP to the provincial legislature. What emerges is a complicated web of family and political ties, a hazy picture of people with money that needed hiding and people who helped them hide it. The logical starting point is Dec. 1, 2003, a date that marked the end of 20 months of preliminary investigation and the beginning of a series of search warrants and evidence seizures that brought charges against Basi, Virk, Victoria police officer Ravinder Dosanjh and eight others. Four weeks before the Dec. 28, 2003 raid on the legislature, RCMP asked the Attorney General's ministry to appoint a special prosecutor in the case, an indication that police were well aware of the implications of what they had uncovered. Just over a week later, police searched the Bremerton Street home of Mandeep Sandhu seizing a computer hard drive and, we later learned, an undisclosed quantity of cash. On Dec. 15, 2003, Victoria police Const. Ravinder Dosanjh was suspended for breach of trust and obstruction of justice after a 10-month internal investigation. In December 2004, Dosanjh was charged with advising Sandhu to lie about the origin of funds seized" from the Bremerton Street house. Victoria police have said that Dosanjh's suspension was indirectly related" to the raids at the legislature. They haven't elaborated on that connection, but the warrants provide a few hints. It's been established that Dosanjh and Sandhu are cousins who owned property together. We know that Sandhu had some money originating from questionable sources and Dosanjh allegedly counselled him to mislead police about the origins of the cash. Nine months later, in September 2004, alleged criminal links between Basi and Sandhu emerged when the two men were among eight people from B.C. and Ontario charged with drug-trafficking. It's clear that RCMP learned something during the course of their drug investigation that got them interested first in Sandhu then Dosanjh. It also appears, in retrospect, that the Dec. 28 police raids on the legislature were a sideshow to the main event, which for police has always been the drug-trafficking and organized crime connection. Most reporters I've talked to believe that police stumbled on improper dealings with regard to the province's move to sell BC Rail, triggering an entirely new branch of the investigation. Just before Christmas, Basi, Virk and a third man, transportation ministry communications officer Aneal Basi, were charged with bribery, breach of trust and fraud in relation to the provincial government's sale of BC Rail. Of particular note is the inclusion of a money-laundering charge against Aneal Basi, Dave Basi's cousin, in the court documents. Like Sandhu, police allege that Aneal Basi was involved in laundering money, specifically cash he accepted from Basi between April 1, 2002 and Jan. 31, 2004." During a recent discussion of the Basi case, a NewsGroup reporter said something like, So what, he had a little grow-op in Shawnigan Lake." We don't know for sure what Dave Basi was into or how deep he was into it, but clearly the allegations against him involve far more than a few pot plants in a rental house up the Malahat. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom