DRUG CASE SPARKED SEARCHES OF CABINET OFFICES

VANCOUVER -- One of the men connected to a weekend police raid on the
legislature offices of two B.C. cabinet ministers said yesterday he's
done nothing wrong and expects to be exonerated. David Basi,
ministerial assistant to Finance Minister Gary Collins, said in a
statement released by his lawyer he was told by RCMP he "was not being
arrested or charged at this time."

"He has co-operated fully with the police search," the statement
said.

Basi, who was fired yesterday, made the statement a day after police
raided the offices of Collins and Transportation Minister Judith Reid,
seizing boxes of files.

RCMP spokesperson Sgt. John Ward said the raid was based on
information related to an organized-crime drug case, as well as
unrelated information discovered as a byproduct of the 20-month drug
investigation that resulted in the arrests last week of nine people.

He stressed the search warrants executed at the legislature were aimed
at two non-elected officials and did not involve any elected
provincial politicians. No arrests have been made nor charges laid in
connection with the legislature raid, he said. "I want to make it
clear it's not a political investigation,"

Collins, vacationing in Hawaii, said that was his understanding as
well. "This, to my knowledge, has nothing to do with anything that
would relate to my role and I think the RCMP has made that clear," he
said.

"Mr. Basi was not involved in the budget-making process or any of the
finance side of it. His role was house business, house leader and
caucus liaison for my role as house leader."

Reid, on holiday in San Francisco, said she was surprised by the raid
and that her office was co-operating with police.

In addition, a search warrant was executed at the home of one of the
two officials, Ward said.

Search warrants were also executed at the home offices of two other
persons living in the Vancouver area and at the office of a private
company doing business in Vancouver and Victoria.

At a separate news conference in Victoria, city police Chief Paul
Battershill said six locations were searched in Victoria, including an
accounting firm and the office of a consultant who lobbies the B.C.
Liberals on behalf of business interests.

Police did not name the ministerial staffers whose offices were
searched. But it's been reported the searches involved records thought
to be in the offices of Basi, who is active in both the federal and
B.C. wings of the Liberal party, and Robert Virk, an assistant to
Reid. Virk has been suspended with pay.

A news release by the criminal justice branch of the Attorney
General's Ministry said a special prosecutor would be advising police
in their investigation into allegations of possible criminal
misconduct by both non-elected officials.

Solicitor General Rich Coleman said the government's oft-stated
concern about the $6-billion annual drug business in British Columbia
is not compromised by an investigation that reached the
legislature.

Premier Gordon Campbell, also vacationing in Hawaii, called it a "very
troubling situation."