Stay informed
Canadian organizer of notorious cocaine plot finally loses epic 7-year fight to remain free
More than 10 years after his transnational cocaine smuggling plot crumbled and seven years after his arrest for orchestrating it, Ali Lalji has lost his epic campaign to stay out of prison.
Lalji, 37, was part of a sensational case that revealed abuse of the Toronto headquarters of the youth-oriented Vice Media to recruit interns, models and musicians as drug mules to smuggle bricks of cocaine glued into the lining of their luggage when they flew to Australia.
While five recruited mules — four Canadians and one American — languished for years in an Australian prison after they were caught at Sydney airport with cocaine valued at $22 million, and while Lalji’s partner, a former Vice editor, spent years locked up in Ontario, Lalji remained free, courtesy of a keen legal strategy and logistical delays.
On Wednesday, he ran out of runway.
Lalji surrendered into custody Wednesday morning in anticipation of the decision by the Court of Appeal for Ontario. He would soon hear the verdict: Appeals of his conviction at his 2023 trial and of his punishment were dismissed, leaving him with a nine-year prison sentence.
The actual time he will remain behind bars was previously reduced somewhat by credit for the brief time he spent in pre-trial custody and a longer period while out on a $1 million bail to his parents’ home while awaiting the conclusion of the legal rigmarole.
Lalji’s lawyer, Ravin Pillay, declined to comment to National Post without first consulting his client. A response was not received prior to publishing deadline.
Lalji became embroiled in the large-scale cocaine plot through his time at Vice, where he worked in advertising for the once mighty media brand. That is where he befriended Vice’s music editor for Canada, Yaroslav Pastukhov, better known by his pen name Slava Pastuk.
The pair recruited young people into a drug smuggling scheme that sent couriers on free trips to Las Vegas, where they were given suitcases with bricks of cocaine hidden inside, which they then took as their luggage on a flight to Sydney, Australia.
Neither man was the brains of the operation, nor its boss. That was the work of B.C.-based men who arranged with a cartel to supply the drugs and jerry rig the luggage, but Pastukhov and Lalji proved to be capable recruiters, convincing sometimes reluctant young people to risk becoming international drug couriers.
Lalji and Pastukhov had both successfully made the same journey themselves, court heard, which proved to be a powerful sales pitch.
It is unknown how long the network had been running or how many couriers made the trek, but the wheels fell off when a group of mules arranged by Lalji and Pastukhov were caught in Australia in 2015 with 40 kilograms of cocaine. Five were arrested, convicted and imprisoned.
The secrets behind the cocaine plot were revealed in an investigative feature by National Post , including the shocking role of Vice’s music editor.
On Jan. 31, 2019, RCMP officers arrested and charged both men with conspiracy to import cocaine into Australia. Pastukhov pleaded guilty and was sentenced that same year.
Lalji, however, took a different tact, leaning on support and resources from his wealthy, globe-hopping family; from his first court appearance to his last, he was represented by top-tier lawyers, seemingly with a mandate to do whatever legal maneuvering they could muster, all while Lalji was free on bail.
Much of the evidence against Lalji at his trial came from the phones of the drug mules that had been seized in Australia — including text messages and recordings that one mule had secretly made of his recruitment meetings — and testimony by Pastukhov, who was called as a reluctant witness.
In late 2023, Justice Russell Silverstein released his guilty verdict against Lalji. Lalji was immediately released on bail pending an appeal.
Every six months since, his bail was renewed while his appeal was perfected, as the court refers to completed appeal documentation.
Three appeal court judges finally heard Lalji’s appeal this January. Lalji’s case was argued by Pillay and opposed by Crown prosecutors Maria Gaspar and Sarah Malik.
Pillay had argued the secret recordings should not have been accepted as evidence because they were not adequately authenticated.
Justice Jonathan Dawe, writing on behalf of the appeal panel, said it was open for the trial judge to accept the recordings because the contents on them inferred the time they were recorded when compared to other evidence, and Pastukhov confirmed some of the voices. There was also no evidence of tampering or fabrication.
Pillay also complained of the trial judge’s handling of Pastukhov’s inconsistent testimony, some of which seemed to help Lalji’s case and some hurt it.
Dawe said it was reasonable for the trial judge to reject most but not all of Pastukhov’s testimony in accordance with other evidence in the case, and to conclude Lalji knew the contraband being smuggled was cocaine, or he was willfully blind to that fact.
Pillay’s argument that Lalji was convicted of a different conspiracy than the one he was charged with was trickier for appeal judges to parse.
Evidence at Lalji’s trial showed that Lalji and Pastukhov jointly recruited and organized trips for two of the five mules who were busted, while Pastukhov, at his own trial, pleaded guilty to recruiting four of them.
Pillay argued that because the men were charged together on a single count of conspiracy, it needed to be the same plot for both accused. And since evidence did not establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Lalji was a part of the larger conspiracy, he should have been acquitted, even if evidence showed he was part of a smaller conspiracy.
“I agree that some of the underlying planks Mr. Lalji relies on to construct this argument are sound,” Dawe wrote. Pillay was right that the accused in a jointly charged conspiracy needs to be part of the same conspiracy.
In this case, however, the court found the two had the same objective — recruiting mules to smuggle cocaine into Australia — and it was reasonable for the trial judge to conclude they were members of a single conspiracy even if Pastukhov knew more specifics than Lalji.
The evidence suggested Lalji was aware there were other moving parts to the plot. He did not think his two couriers were “a stand-alone criminal venture that was not part of a broader overarching conspiracy,” Dawe wrote.
Lalji also objected to his nine-year sentence.
Pillay argued there was not sufficient evidence that Lalji had made a smuggling trip prior to recruiting the others, but the appeal judges disagreed. Pillay also said the 40-kg size of the load carried by the five mules should not have been considered an “extremely aggravating” factor against Lalji, arguing the two mules Lalji recruited only carried 17.3 kg of cocaine.
The judges disagreed: “There was evidence supporting the inference that Mr. Lalji knew that he was participating in a very large-scale ongoing importing scheme, even if he did not know exactly how much contraband was being imported on this one occasion,” Dawe wrote.
And while evidence showed Pastukhov played a larger role, Pastukhov also quickly pleaded guilty while Lalji definitely did not, meaning the two factors balanced out to both men being given the same punishment.
• Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | Twitter: AD_Humphreys
Unpublished Newswire
Comments
Be the first to comment