HELLS MOLE REVEALS DEAL

'Big Mike' Admits To Assaults On RCMP's Dime

Michael Plante went from earning $9 or $10 an hour as a hotel doorman
to making a half-million dollars in a lump-sum payment from the RCMP
for infiltrating the Hells Angels.

He was promised another half-million to testify against them.

Details of Plante's deal with the RCMP were revealed during his
testimony at the opening of the first prosecution against the
notorious motorcycle gang arising from multiple arrests in July 2005.

Alleged Hells Angels associates Ronaldo Lising and Nima Ghavami have
pleaded not guilty to methamphetamine trafficking.

Their lawyers have applied for a stay of the charges on the grounds
that Plante, a key Crown witness, committed crimes not authorized by
police, such as assaults.

Plante, who has changed his name for security reasons, was paid
$500,000 in August 2005 and stands to earn another $500,000 in
taxable income for testifying.

He was offered $30,000 in a letter of acknowledgement with police in
April 2004, but that quickly escalated to $1 million.

"That's pretty good negotiations on your part," Greg DelBigio,
Lising's lawyer, said in B.C. Supreme Court.

"This was all their doing, not mine," replied Plante, 39. "It was the
police who suggested every payment I received."

Plante yesterday admitted to committing numerous assaults while on
the RCMP payroll, including an attack on a Hells Angels' target.

Plante, nicknamed "Big Mike," told Justice Victor Curtis that at one
point he punched alleged Hells Angels associate Kerry Ryan Renaud,
originally part of the same indictment as Lising and Ghavami, but
whose case has been severed.

Plante said he earned up to $14,000 a month in additional tax-free
payments as an agent. The deal also called for RCMP to pay the lease
on his 2003 Harley Davidson motorcycle and for the purchase of a Ford Mustang.

Plante told the judge he was tired of the Hells Angels and offered
his services to police in July 2003 after being arrested for an
alleged assault and extortion.

Initially he worked as a police informant, advising on the activities
of the Angels, and then signed on as a police agent.

Though he's never been convicted of a crime, Plante admitted to
abducting people and holding them against their will and shooting a
man who survived.

The trial continues.