METRO VANCOUVER — A B.C.-based drug ring smuggled at least 208 kilos of cocaine and three firearms into Canada with the help of a corrupt border guard, B.C. Supreme Court heard Monday.
Crown prosecutor James Torrance said former Canada Border Services Agency guard Baljinder Kandola conspired with smugglers Shminder Johal and Herman Riar for more than a year before his arrest in October 2007 at his Pacific Border crossing booth.
Torrance told Justice Selwyn Romilly on the opening day of Kandola’s and Johal’s trial that intercepted telephone calls, surveillance in both Canada and the U.S., as well as text messages would show that Johal recruited Kandola into the drug gang by offering him cash to allow the cocaine across the border.
The third accused, Riar, was sentenced in January 2010 to 12 years in jail after pleading guilty in the drug-smuggling case.
Torrance said Johal and Riar travelled to Washington state on drug runs "on at least three occasions" between May 2007 and their arrest on Oct. 25, 2007, crossing through Kandola’s lane each time.
And CBSA records show that Kandola never checked the computer database for either man on any of their trips through his checkpoint, Romilly heard.
Torrance said the men were nabbed after an RCMP-CBSA joint undercover operation dubbed E-Pell.
The Crown prosecutor focused his opening on three trips across the border made by Riar and Johal, travelling separately, on July 28, Sept. 7 and Oct. 25, 2007.
On the September and October trips, Riar was followed to a storage locker in Bothel, Wash., where he loaded boxes into his vehicle, court was told.
Kandola would send text messages to Johal indicating the time that it was safe to cross, court heard. A short time before the trio was arrested, Kandola sent a text to Johal saying "Aja," which means "come" in Punjabi, Torrance told Romilly.
After the final crossing, shortly after midnight Oct. 25, Riar and Johal were arrested in south Surrey and Kandola was taken into custody at work.
Later that morning, police found the 208 kilos of cocaine and three handguns hidden in 11 boxes inside a GMC Yukon SUV driven by Riar, Torrance said.
The cocaine was packed into bricks that each weighed more than a kilo, the Crown said, and the three guns were each hidden inside socks, placed in a white plastic bag and stuffed into one of the boxes with some of the cocaine, Torrance said.
He said a flurry of phone calls made between the three before each crossing are proof of the conspiracy. As well, police surveilled meetings between the accused in parking lots at a Surrey strip mall, a 7-Eleven, on Annacis Island and in another Surrey parking lot, Torrance said.
And a bug inside Kandola’s border booth recorded conversations between the accused, court was told.
Kandola’s lawyer James Sutherland and Johal’s lawyer Danny Markovitz each suggested Monday their clients would assert that they did not know what was inside the boxes.
Both men are out on bail and arrived with family members, sitting on opposite sides of courtroom 207 at the New Westminster Law Courts. At the morning break, a Kandola relative passed a folded note to a Johal relative.
Retired RCMP officer Joe Sellinger testified Monday that he was part of the undercover probe of the drug ring and helped with the arrests of Johal and Riar on Oct. 25, 2007.
He was also part of the search team that found the cocaine and tested and weighed it, he testified.
Sellinger told Romilly that police had set up a staged accident on 176th Street, on the Canadian side of the border, and that he followed Johal’s vehicle as it approached the accident scene.
Both accused pleaded not guilty Monday to all the charges laid in the case – including importation of cocaine and firearms, possession for the purpose of trafficking, breach of trust and bribing an official.
Johal earlier pleaded guilty along with Riar, but was later permitted to withdraw the plea and go to trial.
Two others have pleaded guilty in Washington state to being involved in the same smuggling conspiracy.
Vancouver businessman Charles Lai was handed a 13-year sentence in Seattle in June 2009 and ordered to pay $250,000.
A month later, American Evans Matan was sentenced to 10 years behind bars for paying someone to move the cocaine from his home to the storage locker in Bothel later visited by Riar.
The trial is scheduled to continue until June 30.
kbolan@vancouversun.com
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