Saxena to be returned to Thailand, ending 13-year judicial marathon
By David Baines, Vancouver SunOctober 29, 2009 11:39 AM
The Supreme Court of Canada has cleared the runway for financial fugitive Rakesh Saxena to be returned to Thailand, officially ending the longest extradition case in Canadian history.
The court announced today that it has denied Saxena’s request for permission to appeal an earlier extradition order. As usual, the court gave no reasons.
Saxena, who was under house arrest in Richmond, turned himself over to RCMP on Wednesday in advance of the ruling. He is currently at the North Fraser Pre-Trail Centre and could not be reached for contact.
RCMP are expected to take Saxena to the Vancouver airport, perhaps as early as today, and hand him over to a posse of Thai officials who flew to Vancouver earlier this week in anticipation of a favorable ruling.
He will then be escorted back to Bangkok to face charges there. His future looks bleak: one of his alleged co=conspirators, Krekkiat Jalicahn, was recently sentenced to 30 years in jail.
In the early 1990s, Saxena worked as treasury adviser to the Bangkok Bank of Commerce where he allegedly embezzled $88 million, then moved to B.C.
In July 1996, he was arrested by RCMP in Whistler at the behest of Thai authorities. The federal department of justice commenced extradition proceedings, which Saxena opposed on grounds that he would not get a fair trial in Thailand.
He was initially released on bail pending the outcome of the court case, but in January 1998, RCMP re-arrested him after he allegedly obtained a phony passport and threatened a witness.
In June 1998, his lawyer persuaded then judge Wally Oppal to approve a novel form of house arrest: Saxena could stay at his luxury False Creek condo as long as he paid for his own 24-hour security to ensure he didn't leave the premises.
This left Saxena free to pursue his business dealings. One was a bauxite concession in Sierra Leone that had been interrupted by rebellion. To restore order, he began negotiating with a South African-based mercenary force called Executive Outcomes to stage a counter-coup, but plans were put on hold when word leaked out.
Questioned by reporters, Saxena said there was nothing in the terms of his bail that prevented him from engaging in counter-coups in Third World countries.
Saxena also became involved in packaging and promoting companies that trade on the virtually unregulated over-the-counter markets in the United States.
From 2001 to 2003, he arranged for overseas boiler-room operators, some with prior criminal records, to sell shares of essentially worthless companies to investors, most located in the United Kingdom.
In many cases, investors did not get their shares. In others, investors received their shares only to discover they were not listed on any exchange or had virtually no value.
Saxena was never charged by police for any of these misdealings, or cited by securities regulators.
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