MANDEL: Bail upheld for accused global drug kingpin Ryan Wedding's lawyer
· Toronto Sun
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Deepak Paradkar, the flashy attorney once known by his Instagram handle – the “cocaine lawyer” – will remain a free man as he awaits extradition to the United States for his alleged role in client Ryan Wedding’s global drug trafficking network.
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In the Court of Appeal’s decision to uphold his $5.25 million bail, the panel considered the “fresh evidence” that Paradkar’s American charges have been whittled down to one, but it’s still a doozy: counselling to commit the murder of an FBI witness in Colombia.
The lawyer once known for tooling around in his yellow Lamborghini is accused of advising Wedding that killing a confidential informant would collapse the prosecution’s case against the former Canadian Olympic snowboarder-turned-narco kingpin.
The witness was later executed with five bullets to the head while dining with friends in Medellin.
Paradkar, arrested last November, has denied the charges.
Wedding, one of the ten most wanted fugitives in the U.S, surrendered in Mexico in January and is presently in American custody awaiting trial.
Just before Christmas, Superior Court Justice Peter Bawden released Paradkar from custody after finding the 62-year-old wasn’t a flight risk considering his ailing health – he’s diabetic, has heart disease and high blood pressure, and underwent quadruple heart bypass – and his deep ties to his wife of 32 years, a colon cancer survivor, and their two daughters, both of whom are lawyers.
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Court heard they own a Thornhill home appraised at $5 million, a Muskoka cottage and have four leased cars – a Mercedes GLC and Maybach, a Maserati Ghibli and an MC 20 sports car – valued at over $200,000.
The Crown had unsuccessfully argued that their champagne lifestyle didn’t match his reported law practice income and was instead the ill-gotten gains of being at the centre of Wedding’s enterprise that allegedly moved hundreds of millions of dollars of drugs and cryptocurrency and took violent action to protect its interests.
U.S. officials allege lawyer paid with bulk cash drops and luxury watches
And it was lucrative, according to U.S. officials. They allege Paradkar was paid with bulk cash drops and luxury watches.
Lawyers for the Attorney General of Canada appealed his release, arguing Bawden made legal errors including not properly scrutinizing Paradkar’s wife as the primary surety or considering the couple’s “unexplained wealth” that would make it easy for him to abscond.
The appeal court disagreed.
“Whether or not he had undisclosed income, the real issue was not whether Mr. Paradkar had the financial means to fund an escape, but whether he had the incentive do so” – and the judge reasonably concluded he did not, wrote Justice Katherine van Rensburg on behalf of the three-judge panel.
The Attorney General also criticized Bawden for prematurely noting there were “peculiarities” in the evidence of the confidential informant who pinned the murder plan on Paradkar when it’s not his role to assess the strength of the case.
The appeal court found that while that’s usually true, the judge had to consider whether the case was so strong that Paradkar had a strong incentive to flee. He concluded that an experienced defence lawyer would recognize it was “defendable” and there was no need to run.
Paradkar argued case against him relies wholly on a confidential witness
Paradkar argued the case against him relies wholly on a confidential witness (CW) who has an incentive to lie to get a sweetheart deal. In the circumstances, there was nothing problematic in the application judge recognizing obvious and serious credibility concerns with the CW’s evidence.
They also rejected the Attorney General’s contention that revoking Paradkar’s bail was necessary to salvage the public’s confidence in the administration of justice.
Bawden had concluded a “reasonable person” would understand his decision to release Paradkar considering the suspended lawyer’s strong incentive to comply, his reliable release plan with a lien on the entire vale of his home, his age and health conditions and his imperiled safety if he remained in jail.
“I agree with the application judge that a reasonable person, fully informed of the facts, would recognize that bail decisions can be difficult and would find reassurance in the application judge’s efforts to fully and carefully explain his conclusions,” van Rensburg wrote.
And so the “cocaine lawyer” remains free in the makeshift prison of his comfy suburban mansion.