Battle over Air India legal fees rages nearly a decade later
Victoria wants Malik family to pay damages after 2005 acquittal
Almost 10 years after Ripudaman Singh Malik was acquitted in the Air India bombing, the B. C. government and his family are still battling in court over the money used to pay his legal fees.
The government wants Malik, his wife and his three eldest sons to pay damages, alleging they conspired to hide his assets so he would qualify for legal funding before his terrorism trial began in 2003.
Malik was acquitted of murder and conspiracy charges on March 16, 2005, but continued to fight the government’s efforts to get repayment of more than $ 5 million loaned for his defence team.
The Vancouver businessman finally repaid the millions in February 2012, but that didn’t end the long- running civil suit by the government.
The attorney general’s latest statement of claim, filed last July, alleges Malik, his wife Raminder and sons Jaspreet, Hardeep and Darshan, “wrongfully and maliciously conspired together to defraud and injure the plaintiff by assisting Ripudaman to hide his assets and disguise his net worth.”
It also says they created numbered companies that they used “to enter into sham transactions, to make payments not owed and to acknowledge liabilities that do not exist.”
Both sides were in B. C. Supreme Court Tuesday asking Justice Mark McEwan to order the other party to provide more information about their positions.
Crown lawyer Frank Potts said neither Darshan nor Hardeep Malik have provided details of how a numbered company of which they’re directors received the cash to buy out $ 1.8 million in mortgages against their parents’ properties.
The company was started in October 2006 and bought out the two mortgages within eight months.
Potts said the government’s position is that the money really came from Malik and his wife. “They say the company came up with the money independent of Ripudaman and Raminder. One would think there’s going to be some paper that would detail where that money came from,” he said.
Justice McEwan asked Darshan Tuesday where the company’s cash came from. “I don’t know,” he replied. McEwan referred Darshan to his own statement of defence, where he claimed the cash didn’t come from his dad.
“If you can’t back up what you say in your statement of defence, you’ve got a problem,” McEwan said.
Hardeep Malik told McEwan the money for the company came from his mother’s sale of some property on the island.
“From what I recollect, there was a property sold in Duncan and that monies my mom put towards a numbered company for her children,” he said.
McEwan ordered the Malik sons to provide the government with their income tax returns from 2003 to 2005 as well as any documentation related to the company’s source of funds. And McEwan ordered the government to provide Raminder Malik’s lawyer with more details about the specific allegations of her role in the purported scheme to diminish her husband’s assets.
McEwan also granted Katherine Wellburn’s request for the total legal, administrative and investigative costs the government wants to recover in connection with the Malik case.