FILES SHOW MOUNTIES TAPED PREMIER'S PHONE CALL

VANCOUVER -- RCMP investigators taped a telephone conversation
between Premier Gordon Campbell and his then-minister of finance,
Gary Collins, during an investigation that led to an unprecedented
police raid on the British Columbia Legislature in 2003, B.C. Supreme
Court heard yesterday.

Neither Mr. Campbell nor Mr. Collins, who has since left politics,
were the focus of the wiretap, which apparently accidentally caught
their private conversation when they used a Ministry of Finance
cellphone that was under surveillance.

A judge had twice refused police authorization to tap the phone,
which was used by Mr. Collins's aide, Dave Basi, saying it was
covered by parliamentary privilege. But on a third application
investigators listed a home address instead of the work address at
the legislature, court was told.

That revelation was made while defence lawyers for Dave Basi, Bobby
Virk and Aneal Basi made a joint application in which they tried to
portray the Crown as being so badly disorganized that key files have
been lost or mislabeled.

Dave Basi and Mr. Virk are former top ministerial aids in the Liberal
government who are facing charges of accepting bribes and influence
peddling. Aneal Basi was a low-level government official who is
charged with fraud.

The trial of the three men is set to begin in December, but Kevin
McCullough, who represents Mr. Virk, said in court the Crown has
failed to disclose documents and has provided defence lawyers with
electronic files that are so badly organized as to be almost unusable.

He is asking the court to grant defence lawyers the right to go into
RCMP "project rooms" where all the evidence -- including cabinet
documents -- is kept.

Mr. McCullough said the prosecution disclosures so far have been "so
substandard" that it has been difficult to organize a defence.

Many files were initially missing, but later came to light after the
defence specifically asked about them, he said, including one
"incredible" police summary that revealed the Premier and his finance
minister had been accidentally caught in a wiretap when Mr. Collins
used Dave Basi's work cellphone.

Mr. McCullough also complained that many documents disclosed to the
defence were misfiled. He said Mr. Virk's tax records, for example,
were filed under Dave Basi's taxes.

Mr. McCullough said defence lawyers, and the court, were told the
Crown's disclosure process was substantially complete in April of
2004. But several months after that, the prosecution released more
than 85,000 pages of additional material, including nearly 5,000
pages that were provided only about 10 weeks before a November trial
date, which later had to be delayed.

"I am very concerned that no one from the special prosecutor's office
has reviewed the entire hard copy of the disclosure materials that
the RCMP maintain. I am equally concerned that there would never be
any way of knowing whether materials have not been disclosed," Mr.
McCullough told Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett.

He will continue to argue his application today.