HOW RCMP GOT THEIR MAN

The cocaine trafficking case of an Ancaster man once considered the
prime suspect in the shooting of an RCMP officer was thrown out of
court after the judge ruled the RCMP broke the law by deliberately
concealing information from the defence. The question is no longer
whether Sauro Greganti is guilty or innocent. The question is to what
lengths will the RCMP go to get their man?

The harder the Mounties tried to nail their suspected cop-shooter, the
more legal firepower they served up to Greganti's defence team, Eddie
Greenspan and Jane Kelly.

Superior Court Justice Walter Stayshyn of Hamilton turned the
blistering spotlight on the RCMP in January when he stayed Greganti's
case and verbally pummelled the investigators in perhaps the harshest
judgment of its kind against police in Canada.

Stayshyn said he was "shocked and dismayed that the RCMP, the chief
federal police agency in Canada, would act in direct contravention of
the clear law of Canada."

Greganti, 45, was never charged in relation to the 1996 shooting of a
Sault Ste. Marie RCMP officer. But one month after his drug trial was
stayed, the officer who was allegedly shot was charged with mischief.
No explanation has ever been given for the charge, other than new
information that arose last summer led to the constable's arrest. His
preliminary hearing will start in September.

These are just a few of the bizarre and tangled details chronicling
the long relationship between Greganti, the RCMP and Greganti's
childhood-friend-turned-paid-police-informant Mario Briglio.

Until now, the history of this astonishing case has never been
reported because Greganti's drug trial ended before any evidence could
be called.

To even begin to understand, we have to go back 35 years to Sault Ste.
Marie.

That's when Greganti was attending elementary school. His family had
emigrated from Italy five years earlier.

Greganti befriended a classmate named Mario Briglio. In their teens,
they occasionally smoked pot and did acid together and Briglio was
around when 15-year-old Greganti met a girl named Loree, who a dozen
years later would become his wife.

Briglio owes his trade as a bricklayer to his old friend
Greganti.

"He kept failing his test to get his license as a bricklayer, so I
took the test for him and passed," says Greganti as he stands in the
living room of his Ancaster home.

Short and stocky with a thick mass of black hair, Greganti is a
talkative man.

He and Loree have three grown children. He says he works as a general
labourer but it has been quite a while since his last job.

He says he earns $100,000 a year from 10 rental properties he owns in
Sault Ste. Marie.

In 1980, Greganti and Briglio had a falling out. Greganti says Briglio
was heavily involved with drugs and, indeed, his school chum was
eventually convicted of drug-related offences.

In 1990, the Gregantis moved to Hamilton and then into their current
home on Norma Crescent in Ancaster two years later.

Meanwhile, Briglio was trying to get a job as a paid police
informant.

Kelly, Greganti's lawyer, says material eventually disclosed by the
RCMP shows "Briglio was trying to become an authorized paid agent of
the police" from April 1995 to February 1996.

And why not? According to Kelly, an agent gets his home, car, cell
phone and salary paid for by the RCMP.

After nearly a year of auditioning, Briglio got his break on March
1,1996.

On that night, RCMP drug officer Andre Fiset reported he was shot by
an unseen gunman while leaving the Sault Ste. Marie detachment. He had
a superficial wound to his arm that did not require medical treatment.

What followed was a 20-officer, multi-jurisdictional task force
dedicated to investigating the high-profile event.

Briglio said he could help. He wanted to help. After all, Fiset was
his "handler," the cop assigned to look after him.

Kelly says the disclosure shows Briglio fingered his old friend
Greganti for the shooting. Briglio told police Greganti had been in
town that night and was acting suspicious.

Greganti didn't know it, but he became the RCMP's number one suspect.
Briglio got the $100,000 a year agent job.

The problem was, the police couldn't get enough evidence to charge
Greganti with the shooting.

So they used the opportunity to launch a drug trafficking
investigation instead, says Kelly.

Assistant Commissioner Al Hutchinson, commanding officer of the RCMP's
Ontario division, would not comment on the Fiset case because it is
still before the courts. He would not confirm the RCMP's own
disclosure files indicate Briglio named Greganti in the shooting.

Hutchinson was given the task of conducting an "administrative review"
of the RCMP's handling of the ruined Greganti drug case. He found
investigators didn't do anything intentionally wrong.

"There was no deliberate withholding of the information," he said. "I
want to be clear it was an error."

Greganti was arrested at gunpoint in a spectacular takedown in his own
neighbourhood in April 1997. At the time, the RCMP said he was
arrested in connection with a drug ring spanning Ontario and Quebec.
He was charged with two counts of trafficking cocaine and three counts
of possession of property obtained through crime.

Greganti spent eight months in the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre
before his relatives were able to raise the $180,000 bail.

His parents hired Greenspan and Kelly. The lawyers say 4,500 pages of
information the RCMP should have disclosed was held back until the eve
of the trial. And when they finally did get it, much of the type was
blacked out.

Kelly says that information had to do with the poor credibility of the
Crown's key witness -- Mario Briglio.

"It was clear Mr. Briglio was going to be the case," she
says.

"He would have been a disastrous witness. He should never, ever have
been hired as an agent."

Hutchinson of the RCMP says Briglio has "been deemed reliable in other
cases" but also admits "there have been issues of unreliability raised."

That's a huge understatement.

In 1998 the Sault Ste. Marie city police were the subject of a
10-month investigation after eight officers -- including Chief Bob
Davies -- were accused of trafficking drugs and taking bribes. The
probe was conducted by Toronto Police and cost more than $150,000.

The end result, released last January, was that the allegations were
unfounded.

The source of the allegations?

Mario Briglio.

Hutchinson would not confirm Kelly's information that Briglio is now
part of the Witness Protection Program. Nor would he say whether he is
still an RCMP informant.

Poof.

Just as suddenly as they appeared, the evidence, the agent and the
case have disappeared.

"As far as (the public's) concerned, I'm still guilty," says
Greganti.

"They think I got off on a technicality."