Mounties were out Friday for the long-awaited seizure of the Kelowna Hells Angels clubhouse.
They arrived shortly after 11 a.m. and before noon and were seen using a locksmith to change locks on the building. The same was happening at clubhouses in Nanaimo and East Vancouver.
“Three clubhouses are now the official property of the province of British Columbia,” Mike Farnworth, solicitor general, minister of public safety and deputy premier of B.C. said Friday.
“The province was successful in its case, in its appeal, which went all the way to the Supreme Court that this property can be forfeited. It is the proceeds of a criminal organization.”
It’s been nearly two months since B.C.’s top court ruled three Hells Angels’ clubhouses were eligible for seizure because members will likely keep using these locations to plan more crime. Yet prior to Friday, nothing had happened. The court of appeal decision reverses an earlier supreme court decision
“Having considered the evidence of unlawful activity together with the findings …concerning both the Hells Angels in general and the Clubhouses in particular, we are satisfied that the inference clearly arises that members’ engagement in unlawful activities was facilitated through access to information gathered surreptitiously at the Clubhouses, and protection from surveillance and detection by law enforcement offered by the Clubhouses.
“Indeed, the most logical and reasonable inference to be drawn from the evidence is that the Clubhouses were designed and outfitted at least in part for that very purpose,” B.C. Court of Appeal justices Mary Newbury, Christopher Grauer and Leonard Marchand wrote in the February decision.
“We are further satisfied that such use of the Clubhouses was likely to continue. There was no evidence of any change in the nature of the Hells Angels, or to the Clubhouses, that would suggest otherwise.”
The clubhouses are located at 3598 E. Georgia St. in Vancouver, 805 Victoria Rd. in Nanaimo, and 837 Ellis St. in Kelowna.
The province’s Civil Forfeiture Office was established in 2006 to seize proceeds of crime. Since then, the clubhouses belonging to the Hells Angels have been raided repeatedly.
The province’s Civil Forfeiture Office was established in 2006 to seize proceeds of crime. Not long after it was organized, the motorcycle gang’s clubhouses were raided by police.
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