A former Vice Media employee who was convicted of helping arrange cocaine smuggling into Australia — a plot that ended with the arrest of five drug mules carrying bricks of cocaine — spent a morning in jail Wednesday while three judges heard arguments on his appeal.
Ali Lalji surrendered at the Toronto South Detention Centre before the start of his appeal hearing, which was a condition of his release on $1-million bail.
Being behind bars is a rarity for Lalji, despite his arrest seven years ago and conviction of conspiracy to import cocaine in 2021, because he has been out on bail since 2019.
After lawyers argued about Lalji’s appeal for about 90 minutes at the Court of Appeal for Ontario, the panel of three judges said they were reserving their decision, and Lalji’s lawyer immediately applied for him to be released again on bail.
Crown prosecutors said they had no objection and a judge said he would sign the bail order.
Lalji, 37, was part of a sensational drug case that revealed an abuse of the Toronto headquarters of the youth-oriented Vice Media empire to recruit interns, models, and musicians to smuggle cocaine hidden in the lining of suitcases as they flew as passengers from Los Angeles to Sydney.
Five recruited drug mules — four Canadians and one American — were caught by border guards at Sydney airport in Australia shortly before Christmas in 2015. Border guards found almost 40 kilos of cocaine valued by Australian authorities at $22 million.
The secrets behind the cocaine plot were revealed in an i
nvestigative feature by National Post
in February 2017, including the shocking role of Vice’s prominent music editor, Yaroslav Pastukhov, better known by his pen name Slava Pastuk, in recruiting the mules.
Lalji also had worked at Vice, and that’s where Pastukhov and Lalji met.
The two were both later arrested for the drug smuggling conspiracy.
Pastukhov pleaded guilty within months of their arrests, was sentenced to nine years, served time in prison and was released on parole, while Lalji fought the charges, was convicted after a drawn-out trial, and sentenced to nine years as well, but released on bail while waiting for his appeal hearing which was years in the making.
The cocaine plot coverage and Lalji’s trial were dominated by Pastukhov, the better known and publicly prominent player, and at Lalji’s appeal hearing Wednesday, the former Vice editor was again a focus.
Pastukhov had been called as a witness at Lalji’s trial, during which he professed to not remember details of the plotting or who was involved. His testimony clashed with detailed accounts he had previously given, including in a published memoir and media interviews.
The original trial judge dismissed most of his testimony as unreliable and not credible. How the trial judge handled Pastukhov’s evidence, however, was an important part of Lalji’s appeal.
Ravin Pillay, Lalji’s lawyer at his trial and at his appeal, said that by rejecting Pastukhov’s testimony the judge unfairly rejected exculpatory evidence.
“I submit that (the judge) is required, when it comes to the exculpatory evidence, even if he rejects it, to go further and consider whether it raises a reasonable doubt. We don’t see that in the ruling,” Pillay told the appeal judges.
Justice Gary Trotter asked how that would have changed Lalji’s specific case: “If (the judge) thought this guy was just lying, how realistically is that going to have any sort of value in raising a reasonable doubt the way it played out in this case?”
Pillay said the trial judge did accept a small portion of Pastukhov’s testimony and used it to help him reach a finding of guilt and that opened the door for greater consideration of exculpatory evidence.
Federal prosecutor Sarah Malik, one of two Crown lawyers arguing at the appeal, said Pillay was wrong in claiming the judge ignored exculpatory evidence.
“Quite frankly, Mr. Pastukhov essentially gave no exculpatory evidence. A person saying ‘I don’t remember’ is not the same as (saying) Mr. Lalji did not do it,” Malik said. “Conveniently not remembering something is not exculpatory.
“Mr. Pastukhov’s credibility was very much seriously an issue and it was open for the trial judge to assess his evidence as he did.”
Pillay also argued that while Pastakov pled guilty to conspiracy to import the entirety of the 40 kilograms of cocaine found in Australia carried by five mules, evidence at trial directly linked Lalji to interacting with only two of them. Pillay argues that the smaller plot was not the same as the larger plot for which Lalji was charged with.
He argued this was reason to overturn Lalji’s conviction or, at least, to lower Lalji’s sentence.
Maria Gaspar, the other Crown prosecutor, said there was clear evidence of a conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into Australia and the law of conspiracy in Canada does not require every participant in it to know all the others and what they are doing.
The evidence at trial was that Lalji bought the plane tickets, and helped organize and coordinate the trips for two of the mules.
“The fact that there was no direct involvement between Mr. Lalji and three of the other parties that were found to be transporting cocaine into Australia doesn’t undermine his participation in that general conspiracy,” Gaspar said.
Pillay also argued the trial judge made mistakes in how he applied the law regarding willful blindness — which is when someone refuses to ask about or investigate something suspicious that they’re doing to purposely prevent them from confirming it is wrong.
Gaspar responded saying the trips he helped organize were “inherently suspicious” — an all expenses paid trip to Las Vegas and then to Australia and being paid $10,000 in cash for picking up suitcases in Las Vegas and flying them to Australia to secretly give them to someone else.
Judge Jonathan Dawe asked if the smaller quantity of drugs directly tied to Lalji in trial evidence should not at least impact Lalji’s prison sentence.
“Doesn’t it still, then, become relevant at sentencing when assessing his moral culpability,” Dawe asked.
Gaspar replied that even if that was the case, the amount the two mules smuggled was large and still worthy of a nine-year sentence.
“I think it’s still within the range of fit sentences, whether he’s culpable for the whole amount or the reduced quantum,” she said.
There was no date given by the judges for when they would reach or release their decision.
• Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | X: AD_Humphreys
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