THE RAID: 6 MONTHS LATER

What Has Happened To The Key Players Since That Startling Day At The
Legislature

Dave Basi is picking up a little work in construction these days. Bob
Virk has been spotted working at his family's corner store, still
collecting his government paycheque but said to be growing weary of
having his life on hold.

Victoria police Const. Ravinder Dosanjh must know the feeling. Like
Virk, he, too, has been suspended with pay for months now. Elsewhere
in Victoria and Vancouver, other men targeted in a flurry of December
police raids wait for news as well: Bruce Clark; Erik Bornmann;
Mandeep Sandhu; an unnamed Victoria businessman led away in handcuffs
one fateful day over the Christmas holiday.

Monday marks six months since British Columbians awoke to the
startling news of a police raid at B.C.'s legislature. More than 30
boxes of documents were seized from two legislative offices that day,
and close to 100 CDs worth of information taken from a government
computer server.

Suspicions of drug-trafficking and influence-peddling triggered the
raid, RCMP would later tell us -- and stopped at that.

As the first TV crews rushed to the legislature on that quiet Sunday
three days after Christmas, seven other search warrants were executed
at the homes and offices of prominent organizers in the federal
Liberal party. A fevered media, left to come up with their own answers
amid veiled comments from the RCMP about the reach of organized crime,
would spend the coming weeks turning over every rock for the smallest
clue of what was going on.

But while tens of thousands of words would be written on the raids in
the days that followed, no one ever turned up much. Six months on, the
raids remain largely unexplained. And with any criminal charges still
months away, the mystery will continue indefinitely.

"Obviously, Mr. Basi would like to have his name cleared," says lawyer
Chris Considine, who represents the ministerial aide and Liberal
organizer fired without explanation the day after the raid. "He's been
left in limbo, and it has been very difficult on his family. But we
have to wait. That's the position we're all in."

The saga started more than two years ago, when police in Vancouver,
Victoria and Toronto began investigating drug rings allegedly selling
cocaine and marijuana between B.C. and Ontario. The legislature raid
was only a small part of the broader investigation, which to date has
involved the execution of more than 20 search warrants and the seizure
of "large amounts" of cash and drugs. Police were back in front of the
courts this month, seeking more warrants.

The granting of a search warrant means only that police have convinced
a judge that there's sufficient suspicion of criminal activity to
justify a more thorough look. Media reports of search warrants being
executed are uncommon -- the news-gathering typically doesn't kick in
until somebody is charged.

But word spread fast after CH TV reporter Mary Griffin got a tip from
a friend that December day telling her that police had been seen
searching legislative offices. Within hours, the province's media were
in a wild scramble for information. The removal of two ministerial
aides from their jobs the next day -- Basi and Virk -- only fuelled
the frenzy.

"I call it 'The Troubles,' " jokes one of the men who briefly baked in
the intense heat of all that media scrutiny.

What do we know for sure? That police learned something during the
course of their drug investigation that got them interested first in
Mandeep Sandhu-- a Victoria businessman whose house was searched and
computer hard drive seized Dec. 9 -- and then Victoria police Const.
Ravinder Dosanjh, suspended with pay Dec. 15 for undisclosed
infractions. Dosanjh and Sandhu owned property together.

Something connected to that brought police to the legislative offices
of Basi and Virk, who at the time worked as ministerial assistants to
Finance Minister Gary Collins and then-

transportation minister Judith Reid, respectively. While tapping the
two men's phones in search of evidence of drug involvement, police
picked up a different kind of conversation about the B.C. Rail
privatization deal that sounded to them like influence-peddling and
taking favours.

That in turn led them to raids at the home offices of government
consultants Clark and Bornmann, as well as a Victoria accounting
office, a local consulting firm and a heating-supply store. Federal
Liberal organizer Mark Marissen, whose wife, Christy Clark, is B.C.'s
deputy premier, also handed over documents. Perhaps coincidentally,
around the same time police busted a grow operation in a rental house
owned by Basi.

But as Vancouver RCMP Sgt. John Ward pointed out in an interview last
week, nothing about that chronology is official. That's simply the
story the media managed to piece together. Police have in fact
released only the sketchiest of details, and not a single name --
which makes it easy for Ward to decline comment when asked about
rumours that Bornmann and the heating-supply store owner are no longer
"persons of interest."

"I couldn't say, because we've never released anyone's name," replies
Ward. "That was you guys who did that."

In the ongoing absence of information, media interest has dwindled
sharply in recent months. A new story surfaces nowadays only when
another court ruling comes down upholding the publication ban on
search-warrant details (considered so sensitive that a decision was
made last year to seal not just the warrants and the information used
to obtain them, but the sealing orders themselves). That has happened
three times so far; media lawyers will be back in court in September
to try again.

That six months have passed with no news isn't unusual, says Ward. He
knows of cases that took years to progress from the search-warrant
stage to charges. Adds William Berardino, the prosecutor overseeing
legislature allegations: "Everyone connected with this is working
flat-out to complete all the tasks necessary to fulfil the
obligations." But until the police investigation wraps up in August,
prosecutors won't know whether there's enough evidence to lay charges.

Meanwhile, life goes on for those caught up in the raids. They like to
keep a low profile, referring curious journalists to their lawyers for
comment or simply not returning calls. Along with everyone else in the
province, they still have no idea why they were targeted by police. "I
don't know any more now than I did on that day in December," says one.

Basi, fired from his $67,000-a-year government job, is passing the
time doing construction work with family members, says his lawyer.
Virk is still collecting his $5,250 monthly paycheque from government,
but has reportedly been talking with his bosses about a severance
package so he can get on with his life. Bornmann had planned all along
to take a leave of absence from his lobbying job this spring to work
on the federal election campaign, and he's still on leave.

The Liberal Party of Canada got caught in the media tornado for a
while when it was discovered that many of those whose offices were
raided were also key Liberal recruiters and devotees of Prime Minister
Paul Martin. But the stories about rigged nomination meetings and
tainted membership lists eventually died away, and were all but
forgotten by the time Martin called the federal election.

The B.C. Liberals have also withered in the glare of unwanted media
attention. But as various cabinet ministers have repeatedly pointed
out, police have made clear that drug trafficking did not go on at the
legislature, nor has any elected official been implicated.

Still, the government has enjoyed the waning media interest of late.
Word of a six-month retrospective elicited a groan from communications
director Andy Orr last week.

"I think it was disconcerting to everybody to have it happen here at
the legislature," says Orr. "And right now, it's kind of gone away.
But it could come back at any time."