Sting suspects a flight risk: U.S
By PETER KENNEDY
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Vancouver — The U.S. Justice Department considers some of the 20 Canadians arrested in connection with the Bermuda Short sting potential flight risks, and is fighting to keep them locked up until they are tried.
"They don't want the Canadian citizens to get out of jail," said Bruce Fleisher, a Miami lawyer representing Kevan Garner, one of five B.C. men charged with money laundering following a three-year investigation led by the RCMP and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
"They want them to be here for trial and they consider them to be a flight risk," he said.
After he was arrested two weeks ago by FBI agents posing as members of a Colombian drug cartel, Mr. Garner expected to secure his freedom after he agreed to post a $300,000 [U.S.] bond with the U.S. District Court in Miami, Mr. Fleisher said.
But the Justice Department has launched an appeal in a bid to keep Mr. Garner in detention until he can be tried. That means he faces an uncertain future until the appeal is heard in several days, his lawyer said.
Charles Cini, president of Toronto-based Rhino Ecosystems Inc. , who has been charged with wire and securities fraud following the joint FBI-RCMP probe dubbed Bermuda Short, is also facing a similar predicament.
He and Mr. Garner will soon be joined in a Miami detention centre by Vancouver stock promoter ***Jack Purdy, who was denied bail after he was arrested recently in New York and charged with participating with Mr. Garner and others in a money laundering ring.***
Mr. Garner is a 47-year-old stock promoter, who was well known in Vancouver's Howe Street brokerage district prior to his arrest.
He will plead not guilty to the money laundering charges when he appears before the U.S. District Court today in Miami, Mr. Fleisher said.
Mr. Fleisher described the hearing as a formality and said his client is "doing well. His family and friends are behind him 100 per cent.
"As a matter of fact, I'm meeting with his wife today," he said. "She is coming down from Vancouver."
When he appears in court today, Mr. Garner is expected to argue that he is a businessman who got caught up in an undercover deal with the RCMP and people who were posing as the cartel in Colombia.
"I think his defence will be that he was entrapped into this," Mr. Fleisher said.
Meanwhile, Douglas Rasberry, the Calgary nightclub owner charged with alleged wire, mail and securities fraud in connection with Bermuda Short, has returned to Canada after he agreed to post a $500,000 bond. |
