Police tape and a fence surround the Hells Angels' clubhouse in Nanaimo, B.C., after RCMP and agents from B.C.'s Solicitor-General's office seized the property under the province's Civil Forfeiture Act back in 2007.DON DENTON/The Canadian Press
B.C.’s top court has ruled that three Hells Angels’ clubhouses can be seized by the province because the bikers will likely keep using these locations to plan more crime, a decision that reinforces the legal approach of the Civil Forfeiture Office in its pursuit of the properties over the past 16 years.
In their unanimous ruling released Wednesday, three British Columbia Court of Appeal judges stated that a lower court judge erred in his 2020 ruling that found the forfeiture office did not prove the three properties in East Vancouver, Kelowna and Nanaimo would be used for future unlawful activity.
On Wednesday, the appeal court found that B.C. Supreme Court Justice Barry Davies incorrectly used an “elevated standard of proof” in determining the facts of the case and also committed “palpable and overriding errors of fact in declining to draw inferences clearly supported by the record.” Instead, the appeal judges ruled, it can be clearly inferred from the evidence of the bikers’ past crimes that they used – and would continue to use – the clubhouses as safe spaces to hatch plans away from the prying eyes of police.
“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,” Justices Mary Newbury, Christopher Grauer and Leonard Marchand wrote. “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.”
Premier David Eby touted the decision as being “very important” and sending a strong message to organized-crime groups that the provincial civil forfeiture regime is sound.
“It’s frustrating for British Columbians to know that people are known to police – they’re driving luxury cars, they own real estate and they don’t appear to have any source of income for that – are operating quite openly in our province,” he told reporters in Victoria.
B.C.’s ruling New Democratic Party, which had called for a review of the Civil Forfeiture Act when it was in opposition, has left the regime alone over the past six years. Mr. Eby said his government will soon introduce a law to use controversial unexplained wealth orders to begin targeting the assets of gangsters and corrupt foreign officials living in the province.
The Hells Angels case started in 2007, a year after the office first opened, when the agency moved on the clubhouse in the Vancouver Island city of Nanaimo. In 2012, the office began proceedings against the Vancouver and Kelowna clubhouses.
The Hells Angels brought a constitutional challenge against the forfeiture office and all three proceedings were wrapped into a single case before the B.C. Supreme Court.
The Globe and Mail has reported extensively on the office, which created to fight organized crime but came to have a far broader reach. A 2014 Globe investigation found its process, known as administrative forfeiture, made it quicker and easier to seize property worth less than $75,000 if authorities believe it is the product of unlawful activity.
The office can seize property even when a person has not been convicted or charged and critics have called it a cash cow.
Rick Ciarniello, a long-time Hells Angel who acts as their spokesperson and who testified in the original B.C. Supreme Court trial that started in 2018, said Wednesday afternoon that the bikers were still about halfway through reading the 116-page ruling and they will need to talk to their lawyers before determining their next steps.
In 2013, Mr. Ciarniello said the Hells Angels had the financial resources everyday people didn’t and were committed to fighting “for all British Columbians” against the province using its civil forfeiture process as a stand-in for criminal investigations. When they won the ruling three years ago, Mr. Ciarniello said the 13-year legal battle had cost the bikers more than a million dollars, which they fundraised by asking for monthly donations from all Hells Angels west of Ontario.
With a report from Justine Hunter in Victoria