CHARGES A LET-DOWN AFTER 'MOB MENACE' BUILDUP BY POLICE

'Are you telling me I lost two months' sleep over some two-bit
grow-op out of a freakin' Cheech-and-Chong movie?"

The speaker was a B.C. Liberal government insider I consult
occasionally. When police raided the legislature last Christmas -- and
the cops held a grim-faced news conference to warn about the slippery
tentacles of organized crime uncoiling in the loftiest reaches of
society -- this guy thought he was living in a different movie.

"I was waiting for a horse's head in my bed," he said. "Now we find
out it's about a grow-op? Good God! It better be about more than that."

If it is about more than that, yesterday's charges against fired
ministerial aide Dave Basi may simply be a skirmish before we really
go to the mattresses. But if that's all the cops have got after nearly
nine months of sleuthing, then Ricky Ricardo probably said it best:
"Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do."

Yesterday, the RCMP announced two charges against Basi, the former senior
assistant to Finance Minister Gary Collins: Growing pot and possession of
pot for the purpose of trafficking.

Basi claims a tenant set up a grow-op in a rental house he owns
without his knowledge.

He wouldn't be the first landlord victimized in such a fashion. The
same thing happened to

Energy Minister Richard Neufeld. And a not-so-bright pot-grower, who
was probably smoking too much of the profits, even set up a grow-op in
a house owned by Ujjal Dosanjh when he was the attorney-general!
("Overgrow the government," indeed.)

Yesterday's charges seem underwhelming compared with the disturbing
warnings police issued after they busted the legislature Dec. 28.

"Organized crime is a cancer eating away at the social and moral
fabric of British Columbia,"

Sgt. John Ward intoned at the time. You would have thought Jimmy Hoffa
was buried under the Speaker's chair.

Now the Liberals are praying that this Cheech-and-Chong movie will
soon sputter out.

That may be wishful thinking. Although Basi may only be facing a pair
of pot charges now, the search-warrant documents released last week
detailed a long list of much more serious allegations against him:
Breach of trust, fraud on the government, money laundering and
possessing proceeds of crime. Special prosecutor Bill Berardino said
he could be recommending further charges before the end of the year.

In other words, this is all still a major embarrassment for the Gordon
Campbell government. (Don't forget about Marshall Smith, the former
chief political aide to then-multiculturalism minister Gulzar Cheema,
who was fired Sept. 3 after being convicted the week before for
trafficking cocaine in Victoria.)

The comical Cheech-and-Chong movie could still turn into a Godfather
shocker for the Liberals.