Immigration hearing provides glimpse of Asian crime groups

Alleged crime boss Tong Sang Lai did not attend the Tuesday hearing, but his wife Sap Mui Vong, right, and oldest daughter Kei Lai, left, were present.

 

 

Photograph by: DARRYL DYCK , THE CANADIAN PRESS'

 

Immigration

Immigration hearing provides glimpse of Asian crime groups

 

Canadian Border Services Agency wants alleged gang boss Tong Sang Lai declared inadmissible

 BY SUSAN LAZARUK, THE PROVINCE FEBRUARY 26, 2013

An alleged crime godfather who immigration officials are trying to deport from Canada was involved in money laundering of more than $2 million while he lived in Canada as a permanent resident, according to court documents.

Documents filed in Federal Court recommending Tong Sang Lai be brought before an immigration admissibility hearing showed Lai and his wife, Sap Mui Vong, and another individual made 49 electronic funds transfers between 2002 and 2006, according to the Financial Transactions and Reports Centre of Canada, or FINTRAC, the federal agency that tracks proceeds of crime and terrorist financing.

The transactions involved $2.2 million Cdn and $140,000 US, the report said.

“The FINTRAC report indicates that there are reasonable grounds to suspect that Lai was or is involved in money laundering activities,” an immigration officer who prepared the report said, adding that Lai used multiple aliases and the amounts involved were rounded numbers.

The officer said there wasn’t strong enough evidence to lay criminal charges but enough to help compel the couple to face an admissibility hearing.

At a three-day hearing by the Immigration and Refugee Board that began Tuesday in Vancouver, the Canada Border Services Agency is seeking to have Lai and his family declared inadmissible on grounds he has ties to organized crime.

The money laundering allegations form part of the case that federal officials built against the couple and their three children to show they misrepresented themselves to gain permanent residency in Canada 14 years ago.

It’s not known why it’s taken years to question their applications.

Lai’s wife, adult son and two adult daughters were present for the hearing, but Lai attended by speaker phone from Macau.

The hearing, which is to hear testimony from two police officers who work fighting organized crime and a retired immigration officer, is pulling back the curtain on the murky world of Asian triads and the ties that bind them to Canada.

An investigation into stolen vehicles being shipped overseas for sale first alerted B.C. law enforcement officials that a major player in the Macau underworld had landed on their shores, Patrick Fogarty, the former superintendent of the Co-ordinated Law Enforcement Unit, told the board Tuesday.

A wiretap in that 1996 investigation captured a conversation about a contract taken out on Lai’s life.

“During the initial phases of Project Bamboo, evidence was brought to my attention of a group that we were investigating taking a contract from Hong Kong to locate and kill (Lai),” testified Fogarty, a veteran police officer and expert in Asian organized crime.

Fogarty said the players who were being asked by someone in Hong Kong to organize the hit were Wilson Wong and Simon Chow, key members of the so-called 14K gang in Vancouver.

“Fortunately for us, Wilson was not much aware of what was going on with a gang war in Macau and this person explained there was a war between the Chipped Tooth (gang) and Lai.”

“The person in Hong Kong was asking if Simon (Chow) would take the contract. It would put him in good favour if he would take the contact,” Fogarty said under questioning from CBSA lawyer Becky Chan.

Wiretaps later captured the head of the 14K gang and his right-hand man discussing a $1-million contract.

“In my world, a contact means to kill,” Fogarty said. “If it’s a contract to break somebody’s legs, they actually qualify that.”

With nothing but the prefix of a cellphone number, Wilson — the man Fogarty described as the No.2 man for 14K in Vancouver — began a flurry of activity to find Lai.

“It was clearly established that from the perspective of these particular individuals operating in Vancouver ... Tong Sang Lai was the head of the Shui Fong, the Water Room gang,” Fogarty said.

“Nobody knows the underworld like the underworld.”

A board adjudicator noted Lai has already filed a challenge under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in relation to the agency’s attempt to remove him for alleged links to organized crime.