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Corruption at the highest levels of the Edmonton Police Service?
254 Plays3 years ago
A detective and 11-year veteran of the Edmonton Police Service has all but ended his policing career after alleging that there is corruption within the Edmonton Police Service that is protecting one of Edmonton's most well-known criminals. Detective Dan Behiels investigated Abdullah Shah for three years but no charges ended up being laid. After exhausting his options Behiels turned whistleblower on his fellow cops and turned over his entire investigation to CBC reporter Janice Johnston. In this two-part podcast Oumar Salifou of the Is This For Real podcast joins us as we dive into the details of Johnston's excellent reporting.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:12
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney. We're recording today here in Amiskwitchi, Wisconsin, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta, here in Treaty 6 territory. And we're on the banks of the Kasiska-Sawanissippi, or the North Saskatchewan River. Joining us today is independent journalist and host of the Is This For Real podcast, Omar Salafut. Omar, welcome. Welcome back to the pod. Thanks for having me, Duncan.
CBC Stories and Police Corruption Allegations
00:00:35
Speaker
So the reason you're on Omar is in the the final week leading up to the kind of province-wide municipal elections here in Edmonton Janice Johnson with CBC released a series of exclusive exclusive explosive
00:00:53
Speaker
and absolutely must read stories. They kind of got lost in the mix with the municipal election going on and really no comment from anyone at the Edmonton Police Service, but all these stories were based on the leaked investigative files of Detective Dan Beheals.
00:01:13
Speaker
Uh, this is a detective that led an investigation into, uh, the person many people know as Abdullah Shaw, but it's also known as Carmen Provez. And this investigation lasted two, three years, ultimately led to, uh, no charges. And, uh, investigation of Beheal's investigation didn't just stop with Shaw. He started investigating members of the EPS as well and making very serious allegations. Here's just like a tiny little quote from the first story.
00:01:43
Speaker
A quote in his January 2021 report to Chief McPhee B. Hills wrote, I believe that members of the Edmonton Police Service have engaged in corrupt acts that have effectively insulated this criminal organization from investigation and prosecution.
Implications of Beheels' Leaks
00:01:58
Speaker
Now, Omar, that's a pretty heavy accusation to make. Yeah, I think it's a very
00:02:06
Speaker
It's a very confusing and very heavy situation that's being followed in this feature, or I guess a set of articles by CBC Edmonton and Janice Johnson.
00:02:23
Speaker
The biggest question that comes to my mind is why? Why would the police, I guess if you believe this accusation, insulate Carmen Perez or Abdullah Shah from prosecution or from facing any of these accusations in this investigation or from furthering an investigation that could have led to charges. So yeah, again, insulating him. I'm not sure this story is kind of weird.
00:02:47
Speaker
Yeah, so ultimately this investigation goes nowhere. Hardly any charges are laid and none that directly result from Beahill's work. But Beahill's is kind of shook by this whole situation, by the fact that nothing happened.
00:03:04
Speaker
And it's not every day that like a longtime cop decides to light his career on fire, but that's what he did. He took his investigative files and he essentially handed them over to Janice Johnson, 64 gigabytes, years worth of investigation into Shaw.
00:03:20
Speaker
And then he turned around and he told his boss, by the way, hey, I leaked all these files to the CBC. And and and, you know, now Beheals is on paid leave and he is awaiting discipline for leaking these
Deeper Dive into Police Corruption and Shaw
00:03:34
Speaker
files to CBC. He's been no charges under the police act have yet been laid against him, but he's been informed that he is under investigation.
00:03:41
Speaker
And I kept reading these pieces and I kept yelling at Omar. I was like, Omar, you have to read these pieces. They're absolutely wild. And so today I think because Shaw is such a kind of pervasive figure and because he is extremely litigious, I think this is mostly just going to be like a reading series where we kind of pull out some of the more extraordinary pieces and paragraphs from Janice Johnson's reporting.
00:04:10
Speaker
but uh but before we get going like you know is there any more context that i think needs needs to be said before we get into this reading series well i guess um maybe we can talk a little bit about slum town and kind of all right i guess the precursor to this story because
00:04:27
Speaker
Carmen Perez or Abdullah Shah was a big part of CBC Edmonton's first or I guess one of their you know, highly You know one of their first highly produced podcast series in summer of 2019 that came out called slum town by kind of chronicled these Buildings that are owned by Carmen Perez and his tenant company or sorry I guess landlord company or whatever you would want to call that and
00:04:54
Speaker
Duncan maybe you can maybe describe what the podcast was like because I don't think either of us has listened to it so I don't think I Listen to it when it came out and I was very mad at it because it was this five-part You know a piece like very this American life very this very gimlet media style like highly produced take on you know essentially Problem properties and then when they when they dug into this problem of problem properties They ran into you know Abdullah Shah owned a lot of them
00:05:25
Speaker
and but that piece of content I mean yeah you bring it up because it's kind of advertised alongside these Janice Johnson articles but I don't think they're very similar in any way like like you know she tried to get this to do this very gritty very realistic kind of portrayal of how what it was like to live in
00:05:43
Speaker
deal with these properties, essentially from the perspective of a homeowner, which she was, a homeowner who lived nearby these properties, though she never really kind of disclosed that. But the journalist, she produced it. But then that Slumtown podcast never once actually had a voice of an unhoused person.
00:06:02
Speaker
or a person who used drugs. And so I listen to it. I mean, a lot of people listen to it. It was not great. I was not a fan. I had my criticisms of it, but it is very funny to see it kind of advertised alongside this deep dive by Janice Johnson into Abdul Eshaq.
00:06:19
Speaker
One thing that I think is important to point out as well is I think when that podcast was produced, Edmonton Police didn't provide almost any comment. And I think that they almost left the journalists in the dark. And then so now you have a situation where I guess, yeah, we have a cop who's kind of coming out and
00:06:40
Speaker
putting his own career on the line in order to seemingly I guess give the public this information but then again yeah we're going to go into the information and see how it's being shaped and you know all these different things and I think it's also worth pointing out as well that Abdullah Shah's lawyer in the article that we're about to read says that
00:06:59
Speaker
Project fist was a witch hunt driven by tunnel vision quote and he didn't agree to be interviewed by CBC But that is his his statement for his clients. So I don't know what that means You can make it that at which you will exactly yes, and we are gonna be careful with our language You know Shaw and his friends and allies are litigious. There are currently four defamation lawsuits that have been levied against the Edmonton Police Service nothing against Janice Johnson so far
00:07:28
Speaker
And this reporting all seems rock-solid. So again, this is again like an extended reading series of this these extraordinary reporting by Janice Johnson on On the EPS. I mean, I think the more important than the stuff than the look into EP into Shaw is
00:07:45
Speaker
What's going on at EPS? What's going on in the Canadian Revenue Agency? Like it's absolutely wild. And let's
The Whistleblower's Path
00:07:52
Speaker
get into it. So part one, the first story is called Behind the Blue Line, Investigating Abdullah Shah. And again, I'm just gonna be quoting directly from Janice Johnson's reporting here. For more than three years, Beheels investigated notorious convicted criminal Abdullah Shah, also known as Carmen Pérez, and his alleged fraudulent dealings conducted through his company, Home Placement Systems, or HPS.
00:08:14
Speaker
the investigation known as Project Fisk, which, just as an aside, in a recent Reddit Ask Me Anything that Detective B. Hills did, this Project Fisk is actually named for Wilson Fisk, the kingpin's actual name in the Marvel comic books.
00:08:30
Speaker
The investigation, known as Project Fisk, looked to dismantle an alleged criminal organization, Shaw, who has a lengthy police history, including drug trafficking and a $30 million mortgage fraud, was suspected of running. Launched in 2019, Project Fisk was to investigate alleged money laundering, tax evasion, organized crime, drug trafficking, human trafficking, violent assaults, and fraud linked to HPS.
00:08:54
Speaker
Yeah, again still wild to me that that fisk is named after kingpin the the earlier like intelligence gathering Operation was also called the flater mouse which seems to has no bearing on Yeah, I feel like this is a situation where they might be better off just like using a random name generator Or like maybe doing a thing where like, you know, like horses have all these weird random names So name every investigation after like yeah, it's like horses go use the hurricane naming convention. Yeah, exactly. There you go. Yeah
00:09:24
Speaker
Okay, I quote, but when the crown decided in January of this year to not lay criminal charges and please drop the investigation, Bee Heels, 39, grew increasingly concerned that justice in his eyes would not be served. Through 2016 to 2018, approximately 10% of Edmonton's homicides occurred in a property owned or controlled by Shaw and his influence over the street level gang activities in the red alert of the red alert were expanding.
00:09:50
Speaker
This is a direct quote from a letter that detected Beahills wrote to police chief Dale McPhee in January of 2021. Continuing quoting from that letter from Beahills to McPhee, increasingly violent offenses were found to occur at an inordinate frequency at these properties due to Shaw housing and supplying drugs to the to the street level gangs.
00:10:12
Speaker
End quote. Feeling as if he had exhausted every option, B. Hill's turned whistleblower.
Crime Statistics and Police Inaction?
00:10:18
Speaker
He handed over a thumb drive to CBC Edmonton. This is the thing that contained 64 gigabytes worth of documents, which is an absolutely titanic amount of information and years
00:10:28
Speaker
police work thousands of hours but right after he did that he confessed his actions in an emailed report to the police chief he didn't want to be apparently this guy's a boy scout he's like look I leaked it I shouldn't have leaked it but I'm but I leaked it
00:10:44
Speaker
Yeah, I guess a few questions come into mind. And I guess I have more questions than answers or anything else at this point. But 10% of murders in Edmonton, I don't have the murder statistics in front of me right now, the violent crime statistics. But OK, one out of 10 murders in the city happens in one of Abdul Esha's houses, or at least one of the houses that are owned by his business.
00:11:12
Speaker
And he was increasingly concerned that justice in his eyes would not be served. So it was worth sacrificing his entire career on one out of 10 of these city's murders. This also leads me to ask in question out of the decade that Beahills has been serving, if anything else in the realm of injustice
00:11:37
Speaker
ever concerned him increasingly to the point where he was willing to make any kind of sacrifice. This is also the province where carding was pretty commonplace for years. A lot of other things I think were pretty unjust. Obviously, maybe not on the same level that we're dealing with here, like I said, one in 10 murders, but I feel like these are questions that should be asked here. The timing of this decision
00:12:03
Speaker
how it's also in the same context as a lot of other things that are happening in this city. And yeah, like I said, one out of 10, still pretty terrible. But yeah, where can we also lay the blame on these things? Can we lay the blame nice and neatly on one individual who also owns a company who also probably has a lot of associates who, like they mentioned, is involved with potentially gangs.
00:12:30
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. A lot of questions. The one out of 10 number really jumped out at me. And it also was like one of the only things that really kind of penetrated the consciousness where it's like, again, this story didn't really do much like the EPS, total media blackout from EPS, the chief and no one, no one said, boo, no one responded to the stories. I mean, I sent in a request like, are you going to say anything about this?
00:12:54
Speaker
They didn't say shit like So total media blackout from EPS on this and and is detective be heels an unreliable narrator like he's clearly not trusted by the upper levels of you know, the EPS and clearly the like the all these other police forces as we go through the story you'll see all these other police forces looked at his work and didn't think that there was enough there to charge so it's like
00:13:19
Speaker
I mean, is there corruption at the highest levels of the police force? Again, the story does leave you with more questions than answers, but again, very important questions are raised. So, Abdullah Shah has a long rap sheet and I think it's worth kind of just setting the table for who it is we're talking about here. So, Shah has a criminal record that dates back to 1983.
00:13:36
Speaker
In 1984, he was sentenced to four years in prison for producing and trafficking methamphetamine. After he was released, Shaw established a complex mortgage fraud ring involving 165 residential and commercial properties in central Edmonton. In February of 2008, he was sentenced to six years in prison for mortgage fraud by an Edmonton judge who called him, quote, the controlling mind of this fraudulent scheme, according to parole board documents.
00:13:59
Speaker
He was given credit for pre-trial custody, served less than two years. He was released in 2009. In 2010, Pravez legally changed his name to Abdullah Shah. And once again, he began collecting residential and commercial properties through his company, HPS. He also faces a preliminary hearing in January on four counts of trafficking, fentanyl.
00:14:19
Speaker
Shaw is currently on probation. He was
Investigations and Lack of Charges
00:14:21
Speaker
sentenced to a year of house arrest and probation after admitting last December that he had paid people to assault a former employee. And on August 13th of this year, Shaw was shot in the face, the jaw actually, at one of his inner city properties. He has apparently recovered. No one has been arrested in connection with that shooting. CBC reached out to Shaw multiple times. He never responded except through his lawyer and through the statement that Omar read out to all of you.
00:14:50
Speaker
Yeah, this is very interesting to me. Okay, the one thing I do want to say about Abdullah Shah and his time in Edmonton and obviously someone who spent years in prison is that
00:15:02
Speaker
I think he's a good example of how rehabilitation is the goal, but often is missed when people go to prison or at least when they have to deal with the criminal justice system. And I think it's pretty sad and disappointing to hear that someone could spend so much time and obviously, you know, seemingly receive so much support and still be
00:15:26
Speaker
seemingly in the same place, or at least still dealing with the criminal justice system and still being charged with all these crimes. Yeah, obviously something is going wrong here. There's a piece that's missing. Someone is not doing their job. Yeah, something's going wrong if someone is continuously repeating the same acts. And people can speculate as to why this is the case. But I think just the fact that it's happening is really sad.
00:15:54
Speaker
Yes, so this subhead is called Intelligence Gaps in Investigation. Investigators spent 2018 gathering intelligence on Shaw and his associates connected to HBS. The investigation was called Project Flatermouse, which was the project that came before Project Fisk.
00:16:10
Speaker
It was designed to collect enough information to convince ALERT, the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams, to launch a criminal organization investigation. Funded by the provincial government, ALERT was created with the objective of tackling serious and organized crime, and when they were contacted by Janice Johnson, they refused to comment on this story. EPS presented its case to ALERT in December 2018, and ALERT declined to take it on.
00:16:36
Speaker
In an August 2021 email to CBC News, Brzezinski, who worked at Alert, said he was not involved in Alert's decision, which had already been made by the time he had met with Beheals. Alert advised EPS that there were several intelligence gaps within the investigation that some of the intelligence, quote, or sorry, comma, that some of the intelligence being relied upon would not stand up in court and ultimately the file did not meet Alert's mandate for intake, Brzezinski wrote.
00:17:03
Speaker
Detective Beheals was encouraged to continue working through the investigation to rectify the outlined issues. At that point, Edmonton Police Inspector Peter Bruni-Brasio authorized Beheals and his partner to launch a new investigation. They partnered with the Canada Revenue Agency and named it Project FISC. The targets were Shaw, HBS, and the people who worked with Shaw.
00:17:23
Speaker
There was a bunch of search warrants that were executed in July 2019 that were a part of Project Fisk. You may have seen them in the news. I remember reading about those in the news that a bunch of like shop properties got raided by the CRA and the cops. Ultimately, those did not lead to any criminal investigations and eventually Project Fisk was called off. And here's where we get to kind of like the meat of it is this is when B. Hills makes his serious allegations that again, no one from EPS has dealt with.
00:17:53
Speaker
In his January 2020 report to Chief McPhee, Beahills wrote, I believe that members of the Edmonton Police Service have engaged in corrupt acts that have effectively insulated this criminal organization from investigation and prosecution.
00:18:06
Speaker
Beheals made a similar allegation in a March 2019 report to McPhee. CBC News requested an interview with McPhee. The request was denied. EPS spokesperson Cheryl Sheppard confirmed late July that the internal concerns raised by Beheals beginning in 2019 were forwarded to the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, or ASERT. That's the province's police watchdog. And Beheals was interviewed by an ASERT investigator.
00:18:32
Speaker
It was determined that the allegations were not believed to be criminal and that EPS would retain the filed, Sheppard wrote. Given the nature of the allegations, the EPS felt it would be more appropriate for an outside agency to investigate. Edmonton Police passed along Beahill's concern to the Calgary Police Service, first in 2019 and then again in 2021. The CPS Anti-Corruption Unit investigated Beahill's allegations for more than two years. The investigation was called Project Achilles, again with, why? Why are you naming Project Achilles?
00:19:00
Speaker
Beeheels was interviewed as were a number of other Edmonton police officers. In July of 2021, the investigating detective with Calgary Police notified Beeheels by email that the CPS investigation had concluded and found that the evidence did not support or meet the threshold for criminal charges. So that's the, that's the, there you go. That's the, that's the important part and that's the message
Historical Perspective on Police Corruption
00:19:20
Speaker
right there. If you need to remember it, I think it's very important to go back to the beginning as well and realize that in his allegation,
00:19:27
Speaker
he said they engaged in corrupt acts corruption corrupt is that it is that a is that a crime corruption is a crime but can you charge someone with that what does that mean i would love to hear what he's you know referring to because yeah corrupt acts is such a broad and vast statement and and like the investigation that the calgary police department did um they said it didn't meet the thresholds for criminal charges and again
00:19:54
Speaker
A lot of things can be very bad and maybe even corrupt, but not meet the threshold for criminal charges. And then you can ask further questions. OK, well, should the threshold be lowered? Should it be raised? Why do we even have a threshold in criminal acts or corruption in institutions that have an exceedingly large amount of power and resources? Again, a lot of questions to be asked here.
00:20:22
Speaker
Yeah, four days later, EPS spokesperson Shepherd noted in an email to CBC that the extensive investigation by Calgary Police found no criminality or evidence of corruption by the Edmonton Police Service and its members.
00:20:34
Speaker
So there you go. Some cops looked into the other cops and they found no corruption. So yeah, okay. Everything's fine. Yeah, this is interesting. It's like a game of he said, she said, but all internally and all the fingers kind of pointing at each other in some ways, because they're all kind of the same, realistically. I mean, in my memory, I mean, I'm only 38 years old. I mean, you're younger than me, but I do not remember any, in my lifetime,
00:21:01
Speaker
of any cops getting rung up on like corruption, right? Like I am unaware of in recent Alberta history of anything like that happened. Like the thing, the only thing that really comes to mind is like when Kerry Diot got kind of rung up on DUI charges that turned out to be like, because they were mad at him for writing like columns and stuff. Like that was bad, that was shady, that was harassing obviously a journalist.
00:21:27
Speaker
But that's the, I don't know, if you're out there and listening to this and I'm just not getting, I'm not remembering correctly a huge corruption story in Alberta policing in the past 25 years, please let me know. But I don't know, there's just no history of this kind of stuff coming to light in Alberta. So it's very interesting that all the proper authorities looked into it and they found nothing. But here we have this 11 year veteran of the EPS, a detective,
00:21:54
Speaker
lighting his career on fire, alleging corruption and criminality, and no one believes him. And Janice Johnson wrote a five-part piece, like 6,000 words, and still nothing has happened. And so I think this deserves to be looked into more. And that's why, you know, we're fucking doing a podcast on it, right? To date, no disciplinary charges have been laid against Bee Heels, but he did receive notice that he is under investigation
00:22:22
Speaker
Uh, for a police act charges of breach of trust, discreditable conduct and insubordination, of course related to his, you know, leaking 64 gigs of, uh, of, uh, investigation materials to the CBC. Yep. So that's essentially the first piece. Like that's, that's it. Um, again, there's four more. The, I think the stuff against Shaw, I think we'll kind of skim over like.
00:22:50
Speaker
Again, I think the far more interesting part of this story is the Edmonton Police stuff and how they simply have stonewalled any kind of internal look into this. But the next piece is called Project Fisk and the Allegations Against Abdullah Shah. I'll probably skim over this a bit more than the first one. The first one kind of definitely set the tone of what we were looking at.
00:23:12
Speaker
But started in 2019 and headed by Detective Dan P. Heals. Project Fisk was a joint operation between the Edmonton Police Service and the Canada Revenue Agency.
Shaw's Exploitation and Community Impact
00:23:22
Speaker
They were focused on money laundering, evasion of taxes, participation in a criminal organization, that sort of thing. And they ended up raiding his bunch of shop properties. Search warrants were executed in July of 2019.
00:23:36
Speaker
And actually, when those search warrants were executed, the public is able to pick up these information to obtain, which is essentially the brief that the police have to give to the judge in order to justify getting a search warrant. And there's some interesting nuggets in there. But in this search of Shaw's properties, more than 11,000 exhibits were seized. The evidence gathered indicated a number of witnesses who felt they had been victimized by Shaw. So presumably, those were interviewed.
00:24:05
Speaker
You know, when the old ITO was unsealed by the courts in January of this year, Shaw's defense lawyer, Paul Moreau, reviewed the document and wrote to CBC News, it is clear that Detective Beheals blatantly lied in the information to obtain sworn under oath to obtain the search warrants. And my client had no ability to respond to these lies before the search warrant was granted and the searches conducted, wrote Shaw's lawyer Moreau.
00:24:29
Speaker
Moreau suggested Beheals acted out of clear animosity and malice towards Shaw. He described Project Fisk as a witch hunt, driven by, quote, tunnel vision. Beheals denies Moreau's allegations. There's the interesting, probably the most interesting part of this is
00:24:49
Speaker
The Shaw business model does go into a bit of detail about how a former employee of Shaw was kind of beat up on orders by Shaw, like in prison. But the the Shaw business model section is, I think, important, like what are the struck, like, oh, we were always kind of I'm always curious in the like structures, like, how does it all work? What's the flowchart that explains how this
00:25:11
Speaker
organization works or how this kind of power system works. Right. And so the Shaw business model, essentially he was a, he was a landlord. He owned a Shaw owned about a hundred rental properties in the city. Uh, but in 2020, his lawyer said he was getting out of the business of landlording.
00:25:26
Speaker
Shaw has also acknowledged that many of his tenants have criminal records, addiction, or mental health issues, and often are unable to pass a credit check or come with a damage deposit. This was kind of ground that was covered in the slum town thing, right? This was the excuse I believe proffered up to the journalists to produce that.
00:25:45
Speaker
But in the final report to the provincial crown about the two-year police investigation into Shaw and his HPS associates, Beeheels noted that housing was often provided to tenants through HPS with no credit checks. Even the damage deposit could be waived and added onto the debt side of the ledger. Home placement systems properties are used to generate income and to house, quote, workers, says the ITO, the information to obtain.
00:26:10
Speaker
And so you can kind of see the outline of how it works, right? In that report, a former HPS employee told police that Shaw's, quote, street reputation and history of violence made it common for people to suffer under recruitment by HPS because the penalty for outstanding debts included violence.
00:26:28
Speaker
Quote, exploitation of existing and developing substance addictions was also a common control method and was employed by Shaw to control individuals for the purposes of exploiting them. This is the report to Crown Council. This is in the ITO again.
00:26:42
Speaker
The former employee was the only person, quote, willing to outline the full nature of his exploitation. He was exploited to conduct work, criminal and non-criminal under threat of violence by means of indentured servitude to Shaw, which is like Jesus Christ. When Edmonton police executed a search warrant on Shaw's Riverbend House in July 2019, they seized a rent roll from June 2019 on 43 properties. It showed that most of the rent had been paid by the tenants had accumulated debt to the tune of nearly $18,000.
00:27:14
Speaker
Yeah, so Again, the people who are caught up in Shaw's orbit. I mean it's it's I can't say too much about it because obviously Legal bullshit, but like it's important to remember that this stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum and that the actions of Shaw and of the police here are having real-life consequences on people Yeah, I
00:27:42
Speaker
Yeah, I think if anything, those are the voices that might be missing from this story, is all the people that have been impacted, whether directly or indirectly. And obviously, I feel like some town attempted to do that, but in its focus on, it was misguided in its focus, and it was misguided in its singular focus on supposed homeowners who are moving into the community.
00:28:09
Speaker
instead of understanding that there are many different angles to the story and that obviously you know you can say that one is more important than the other but realistically yeah there are a lot of victims there are a lot of people who have things at stake here and yeah a lot of people have suffered because of actions by you know all of these people so yeah I don't know it's a complicated story
00:28:31
Speaker
Think you're right like this this piece this series of pieces I mean has I mean it's just simply better reporting right like they have they know all of the stuff that the police know which is like I mean the police do a lot the police did a huge deep dive on this guy for years and I mean ultimately they didn't lay any criminal charges for a variety of reasons but like what was missing from slumtown was the like was the actual flowchart here we have the flowchart and
00:28:55
Speaker
But what we don't have again is the like what is the actual effect like the people on the ground? Like what are they going through? What is it like to live? To be under this system to work for him to like know to have loved ones who work for him or whatever, right? Like it is it is it is still a giant gap in the reporting on this story is that The voices of those people still are not out in the world. I
00:29:21
Speaker
Yeah. And I think the story is worse for it. And if anything, I don't think it's very easy to do. I don't think what we're asking for is obviously easy. I think a lot of people don't want to talk to the media for a plethora of reasons. Especially with someone like Shaw on the other end of it, right? Yeah. Exactly. But at the same time, I feel like, yeah, it's a big gap.
00:29:46
Speaker
it would be it would be good to know because yeah ultimately i think they're probably going through very very difficult situations and um yeah it doesn't it doesn't really get shown here so this third piece i think the third and the fourth piece really jumped out at me when i read them headline police investigation probes landlords taxes casino activities the subhead detective recommended 19 criminal charges out of project fisk but the crown disagreed and didn't pursue charges
Shaw's Financial Crimes
00:30:15
Speaker
So the stuff when we get into the CRA stuff blows my mind. Like, I don't know. I mean, you're pretty young. You've never had to deal with the CRA. The CRA.
00:30:26
Speaker
they can do whatever the fuck they want. Like they can crack you open and look inside. Yeah, I have one friend actually who I went to school with and he was an accountant and he ended up at the CRA for an internship and I think he might still be there, but yeah, he was telling me how all he does is go into, you know, medium to small business owners and you know, really, you know.
00:30:45
Speaker
you know, check if everything's all right, you know, what's being expensed, what's not being expensed, you know, all the things that, you know, you can throw red flags at, basically. I know, I know. Like, it's just as a total layperson, not an accountant, not anyone who's even really had any negative dealings with CRA, just like have had people who have had, it's like,
00:31:05
Speaker
Alright, well here's the Janice Johnson piece. For two years, investigators with Project Fisk, a joint Edmonton Police Service and Canada Revenue Agency task force, probed the empire built by notorious inner-city landlord Abdullah Shaw, also known as Carmen Fervéz. But despite the thousands of hours committed to unraveling the inner workings of a suspected criminal organization, no charges related against Shaw or seven of his associates connected to home placement systems.
00:31:27
Speaker
This was a blow to the man who headed up the investigation, now suspended Edmonton Police Detective Dan Beheals. In a 75-page summary of the case he submitted to the Crown in December of last year, the aforementioned ITO, Beheals wrote that he believed he had the evidence to support 19 criminal charges against Shaw and seven of his HPS associates, including participation in a criminal organization, laundering proceeds of crime, fraud, forgery, human trafficking, possession of property obtained by crime, and drug trafficking.
00:31:54
Speaker
After reviewing Beahill's findings that same month, the Crown declined to pursue any charges. Sarah Langley, Chief Prosecutor with Alberta Appeals and Specialized Prosecution Office, told CPC News that in order to prosecute, there must be enough evidence for a reasonable likelihood of conviction and it must be in the public interest. I mean, kind of one or the other there. Well, this is interesting because
00:32:22
Speaker
I feel like, yeah, you could have something that's in the public interest that you don't have enough evidence for. You could have something that you have enough evidence for, but it's a waste of public resources, because all of these current prosecutors are taxpayer funded. And realistically, you consistently hear stories about how these offices are underfunded, how there's not enough prosecutors. Obviously, the legal profession, I don't think incentivizes, but definitely has a problem with people going into
00:32:53
Speaker
public prosecution, essentially. I think it's more enticing to go do other things with your law degree for at least a lot of people that I know. So with all those things in mind, I feel like the answer that's being given for not moving forward with the charges against Carmen Perez, they're reasonable, but again, you could argue otherwise.
00:33:13
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, here we have another institution that, in this case, the Alberta Crown Prosecutors, who simply don't believe Danby Hill's or don't believe in his work, right? And don't believe that he was did enough to actually prove. And the quote here is, the Alberta Crown Prosecution Service maintains that, to date, this test has not been satisfied, the test about reasonable likelihood of condition and public interest. This test has not been satisfied with respect to any of the charges contemplated in relation to any of the alleged conduct.
00:33:42
Speaker
Beheals disagreed, and this is why, of course, he ended up turning over his entire investigation file to Janice Johnson at CBC. Going back to the Janice Johnson story, one of the lawyers who represents Shaw has accused Beheals of conducting a witch hunt against his client. This investigation resulted in a colossal waste of resources and was driven by tunnel vision and malice, Paul Morrow wrote in an email to CBC News.
00:34:08
Speaker
However, Moro and Shaw did decline repeated requests to be interviewed. I mean, I do want to know how much time and money was spent on this investigation. Oh man. Matt's a doozy. Matt's a doozy when you really put this in the larger context, which again, very important to do. We're dealing with a couple of things here. You know, if we really scale it completely all the way to the very top, we're dealing with a province in Alberta that has a serious dependence on natural resources that's put a, you know,
00:34:38
Speaker
put a baseball to our kneecap in terms of our ability to actually make money. And then you circle back to Edmonton, a city that completely, in my opinion, overfunds its police department. And then you have a police department that has an investigation that's going on for years and years and years using three years of investigation into the thousands of man hours, probably tens of thousands. And when we say man hours, we're also talking about employees that are
00:35:03
Speaker
guaranteed making more than $100,000 a year. These are investigators. Very well paid. Very, very well paid. With lots of resources. Allegations from these investigators cause other investigations to be prompted that end up in a dead end. Because again, Calgary Police was investigating
00:35:19
Speaker
The Edmonton Police, based on these allegations, you had ASERT that was contacted that declined to investigate. And all of this to end up at the same place that they essentially started, which was nothing. Absolutely nothing. And I don't know if we're allowed to be angry about that. Are we allowed to complain about that? It's a waste of fucking money. To have gone to the extent to have invested so much time and resources into this investigation that they did.
00:35:48
Speaker
And to come up with nothing? Yeah, that's a waste of fucking money. I guess the argument might be that, you know, everything could end up as a waste of money, but we have to go above and beyond to, you know, actually investigate every crime and make sure that we do our due diligence and, you know, try to charge these people because you never know. But at the same time, I feel like there's been so many steps along this road where maybe
00:36:14
Speaker
Beahills would have known that there was not going to be Charges late at the very end. Well Charles lawyers, right? This was a colossal waste of resources and whether it was driven by tunnel vision or malice I don't have anything I can't say but I mean like colossal waste of resources to spend years investigating this guy and to wait and delay no charges and
00:36:35
Speaker
Like, okay, is the corruption at the highest levels of the police force real? I mean, we have no idea. But at the very least, this is a stunning level of incompetence at all levels of the EPS to investigate so much time and effort into investigating this man and not charge him with a single thing. And then look, and then we're going to like, let's dive into it because the story gets like into some very interesting specifics.
00:36:59
Speaker
Okay, subhead properties, casinos, and alleged tax evasion. The Project Fisk investigative documents detail how Bee Heels and investigators believe Shaw and his HPS associates allegedly evaded paying taxes and laundered money. A CRA analysis of the possession and sales of property under the control of HPS alleged that between 2013 and 2017, the company had evaded taxes on 3.4 million on sales of property, the report to the Crown States.
00:37:26
Speaker
Home placement system operates in a cash business, making it easy to co-mangle legitimate cash with illicit cash, Bee Heels wrote to the Crown. For the purpose of this investigation, the illicit money that will be focused on is the black money, money that is derived from the evasion of taxes.
00:37:43
Speaker
Matthew Maguire, a Toronto-based forensic accountant and recognized expert on money laundering, has reviewed documents from this investigation that were provided to him by Janice Johnson of CBC News. Quote, The alleged tax evasion has a lot of merit from the perspective of creating excess cash, Maguire told CBC after reviewing the CRA analysis. Not paying taxes on any of that money leaves them 50% better off than if taxes had been paid, he said. It would be hard to invent a set of facts to better showcase prevailing money laundering techniques in Canada.
00:38:11
Speaker
A spokesperson for the CRA would not say if the agency had laid any charges against Shaw or if charges were pending following Project Fisk. This quote is from CRA. In order to ensure the integrity of our work and to respect the confidentiality provisions of the acts we administer, the Canada Revenue Agency does not comment on an investigation that it may or may not be undertaking. Cool. A spokesperson. Nice. Very cool. We cannot confirm or deny that when we raided that guy's place and took 11,000 exhibits that we ever did anything with it.
00:38:41
Speaker
Sure. Subhead here, Anatomy of a Property Transaction. In the report to Crown Council, Bee Heels details numerous allegations on how Shaw and his HPS associates were able to allegedly avoid paying taxes. As of July 2019, HPS owned more than $24 million in residential and commercial real estate in the Edmonton area.
00:39:00
Speaker
Beheals also alleges in the same document that many of the properties were owned by numbered companies with mortgages obtained from private lenders at high interest rates. In one example detailed in the report, a numbered company bought a multi-unit building in the Edmonton neighborhood of Parkdale, just north of Commonwealth Stadium, for $153,750 in January of 2014.
00:39:22
Speaker
A Shaw family member signed the transfer and got a $125,000 mortgage from a Vancouver lender. Six months later in July, the same property was appraised at $500,000. By May 2016, property taxes were in arrears for $12,714, and in September of that year, the building was damaged by fire and later boarded up. A month later, in October, Alberta Health Services deemed the premises unfit for human habitation.
00:39:46
Speaker
In February of 2017, a different numbered company purchased the property for $375,000, despite the extensive fire damage, taxes owed, and that had been found unfit to live in. A mortgage was obtained through the same Vancouver private lender for $230,000.
00:40:01
Speaker
In May 2017, the new owner applied for vacant dwelling insurance. A different numbered company, run by the same former purchaser, brought the property for $415,000 in October 2017, and in December of that same year, a mortgage renewal for $200,000 was issued by the same Vancouver private lender. This property is no longer under the control of Shaw, his HBS associates, or any of his numbered companies. The city issued a demolition order for the building on October of 2019.
00:40:28
Speaker
The now empty lot was transferred to an Edmonton developer in January 2021 for $270,000. The city has assessed its current value at $350,000. I actually drove by this the other day. It's just a giant hole in the ground with a pile of dirt. I don't remember the building when it was around. But again, I'm not a mortgage fraud expert. I'm not a criminal prosecutor. I don't work for the CRA. I see that series of facts in a row laid out.
00:40:58
Speaker
And I struggle to understand it. Yeah, it certainly seems suspicious. Very suspicious, obviously.
00:41:10
Speaker
It would be nice if someone could hold your hand and walk you through why exactly it was wrong and how exactly people profited off of it. I think again, I'm inclined to look at the bigger picture as well and realize that there are a lot more serious tax evasion schemes going on and a lot of them are run by, you know,
00:41:32
Speaker
what you may call, you know, legitimate actors, you know, people who have immense amount of wealth and choose to store it in offshore accounts or in other assets that are, you know, untaxable or take advantage of other systems, you know, like charity systems to, you know, evade taxes.
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:41:49
Speaker
But, you know, obviously, Abdullah Shah is the star of the show today. So his
00:41:54
Speaker
tax evasion and, you know, his alleged tax. Yes, of course. Alleged tax evasion. But I should clarify that. So Beheals gets back into it. He says investigators struggle to understand the 270 percent increase in property value. Given that there was an arson, the property was deemed unfit for human habit, human habitation. And there were no renovations completed. Beheals noted in his report to the Crown.
00:42:15
Speaker
Maguire, the money laundering expert we quoted earlier, was also asked for his assessment. The alleged mortgage fraud ostensibly created hundreds of thousands of dollars in excess revenue, Maguire said. If they continue that pattern, they can get their money out through foreclosure. The finance company is out the money. Allegations of suspicious real estate transactions were also included in a July 2019 document Beheals filed with the provincial court asking a judge to issue search warrants on a number of properties related to Shaw. This ITO was also a snapshot of the investigation at the time it was filed.
00:42:45
Speaker
In a recent email to CBC, Shaw's lawyer, a different lawyer named Erica Norheim wrote, quote, there was nothing illegal about any of the real estate transactions referenced in the ITO. And we point out that the crown expressly declined to prosecute, which again, they're not wrong. No one thought this was illegal. Subhead here, alleged casino money laundering. This one was like really blew my hair back.
00:43:07
Speaker
Another of the key allegations in the report Beehills wrote to the Crown was that Shaw was suspected of wandering money through casinos. The National Parole Board noted in a December 2009 report that while Shaw was on statutory release for conviction of mortgage fraud and position of property obtained by crime, RCMP spotted him at a casino 18 times between June and August of that year.
00:43:26
Speaker
cashing out large sums of money ranging from $10,000 to $120,000. The report also notes that Shaw told his parole officer in June 2009 that he had come up with a self-opposed ban at casinos as Shaw had a problem with gambling. The ITO filed in July of 2019 included an opinion from an RCMP expert on money laundering.
00:43:48
Speaker
"...one of the most common problems faced by criminals is the need to deposit, convert, or dispose of large amounts of cash into financial institutions or other forms of commerce and trade without drawing undue attention to oneself," wrote Constable William Lewadnyk. According to investigative documents in December 2018, Alberta Gaming Liquor and Cannabis reviewed Shaw's casino activity from June through November of that year.
00:44:11
Speaker
It found he had placed $570,000 into casinos that reported to AGLC over that six month period. Shaw also dropped $238,000 at the River Cree Resort and Casino between April and July 2018.
00:44:27
Speaker
The review noted that Shaw was to remain at extreme due to extensive criminality and large volumes. Maguire said rating Shaw as an extreme risk sent a strong signal.
00:44:49
Speaker
When we're talking about extreme risk, we're beyond the idea of a possibility and we're at the point of probability or likelihood, McGuire said. It's not just a theoretical possibility that this person can launder money. We think they probably are. Whenever casinos have reasonable grounds to suspect a financial transaction is related to money laundering,
00:45:06
Speaker
they must file a Suspicious Transaction Report, or STR. According to court documents, eight casinos completed 82 pages of STRs on Shaw's gambling activity between October 14, 2016 and July 7, 2018.
00:45:22
Speaker
That is a lot of pages of suspicious transaction reports. I don't know how much, I don't know what the spacing is or what kind of font size they use. That seems like a lot. The documents show that in June 2018, Shaw went to Casino Edmonton with a female business associate. According to the suspicious transaction report, while Shaw sat at a VLT, his coworker spoke to another man.
00:45:44
Speaker
Shaw approached them and shook the man's hand. When the other man left, she passed Shaw an undetermined amount of cash. Shaw sat down at the baccarat table and bought in for $1000 using $100 bills. In six minutes, he nearly tripled his money. His business associate approached the table and whispered in Shaw's ear. Shaw passed all of his chips on her to cash out on his behalf. When she was cashing out the $2900 in chips, a manager asked her for identification. Shaw told the cashier he'd do it.
00:46:14
Speaker
he'd do it himself, asking why they wanted her ID when she was cashing out for less than the reportable $10,000 limit. Shaw got his money and the pair left the casinos. The individuals' actions are suspicious in nature, given the totality of his play. SDR states, Shaw is sporadically involved in a high volume of play while utilizing funds from an unknown slash unverified source.
00:46:36
Speaker
McGuire, the money laundering expert, reviewed the suspicious transaction reports. This is the classic money laundering technique, he concluded. And also, I would recommend, if you want to learn more about how folks launder money at casinos, Canada Land Commons did a really good episode on the Vancouver Method, which I highly recommend.
00:46:58
Speaker
which really does explain quite well how it all works. But we're going back to the Maguire, the money laundering expert here. Quote, you're passing the chips to somebody else to try to have them be the person identified so that you're not the one that's linked to the source of funds. Maguire said a typical money launderer's objective is to obscure the original source of the cash spent at a casino.
00:47:18
Speaker
The idea is to hopefully get a casino check afterwards to have an apparent legitimate source for the funds that you're depositing somewhere else or using somewhere else, McGuire said. Not just one casino thought that this looked like money laundering, a number of casinos thought that it looked like it was money laundering.
00:47:34
Speaker
Asked by CBC News about her client's casino activities, particularly the June 2018 events, Shaw's lawyer Erica Norheim wrote in an email that, quote, such behavior is equally consistent with entirely lawful activities. She told CBC that Shaw is a problem gambler who voluntarily enrolled in an AGLC self-exclusion program on July 7th, 2018 for a five-year term.
00:47:58
Speaker
The evidence you have obtained regarding Mr. Scholl's vulnerability to gaming activities may be sensational, sensational, but respectfully, it is a private manner, and the evidence in the ITO does not in fact establish that gambling was used in any way to launder money," Norheim wrote. All of the money used by my clients at the casino was lawfully obtained.
00:48:16
Speaker
And that's it. That's the final sentence of part three. I think we got to end it here. We got to come back for a part two. But like, again, I want to do this podcast literally just to say stuff like this out loud and just to not know that I'm going crazy when this gets reported by the CBC and no one gives a shit.
00:48:36
Speaker
yeah it's important to say these things out loud and like realize how things are operating in our communities and um yeah i think if anything i just hope anyone who didn't get the chance to read the articles gets a chance to know this information now and yeah maybe us all being aware about it will somehow
00:48:55
Speaker
I don't know, we'll just all be aware of it. Yes, the more you know. The more you know. Yeah, exactly. Omar, thanks so much for coming on this pod. How can people follow you along on the internet to support your work? You can find my podcast at isthisforreal.ca. I don't know where else you can find me, really. You can follow us on Instagram at the same handle. And yeah, follow the progress report out. I'll be writing for the hum and you can, I don't know.
00:49:25
Speaker
search my name and you'll find my writing there. But you've gotten off Twitter though. Yeah, I don't have a Twitter account anymore. I might make one again eventually. Congratulations, don't do it, unless you have to. But again, thanks so much to Omar for coming on the pod. Also folks, if you like this pod, you want to keep hearing more podcasts like it.
00:49:44
Speaker
You can join the 500 or so other folks who help keep this independent media project going. There's a link in the show notes, or you can go to theprogressreport.ca slash patrons, put in your credit card, contribute, you know, five, 10, $15 a month, whatever you can afford. We would really appreciate it.
00:49:59
Speaker
Also, if you have any notes, thoughts, or comments, I'm really easy to reach. You can find me on Twitter, where I spend far too much time at, at Dunkin' Kinney. You can reach me by email at dunkincayatprogressalberta.ca. Thanks to Jim Story for editing this as always. Thanks to Omar for being a fantastic guest. Thank you to Cosmic FamU Communist for our amazing theme. Thank you for listening, and goodbye.