$55M drug-bust money laundering charge should be stayed because of delay, says lawyer
CBC
A Calgary man who pleaded guilty to money laundering in connection with a $55-million drug trafficking investigation will ask a judge to stay his charges because of the delay in the case.
Talal Fouani, 48, was charged in June 2022 and pleaded guilty in March 2023.
The case never made it to sentencing.
Between March and November 2023, Fouani's defence lawyer, Yoav Niv, made a number of requests of the court.
During that eight-month period, Niv made applications to:
In November, Niv told Justice Greg Stirling that he would be "withdrawing from the record" if the judge did not recuse himself.
"It's become such a mess," said Niv. "I'm at the end of my rope on this file."
Stirling refused to recuse himself and Niv got off record on the case.
When that happened, Fouani tearfully told the judge he'd paid Niv $500,000 in legal fees over the past 17 months and was broke.
Defence lawyer Greg Dunn then took over Fouani's case and the lawyers, judge and accused met in court on Feb. 5 for a progress report.
"There's been a lot of applications, there's been a lot of delay," Dunn told the court that day.
Dunn said his first order of business was to determine which, if any, of Niv's applications to proceed with.
At a case management meeting in March, Dunn told the court he was abandoning all applications but two.
The first is a disclosure application for access to Fouani's computer that was seized by police and returned with corrupted data that the defence believes "would be relevant in rebutting some of the facts," said Dunn.
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