Suspect ‘must prove innocence’
About $1-million in coins was seized on Oct. 6.
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Updated: November 19, 2009 12:37 PM
A man arrested at the Douglas border last month with about $1 million in undeclared cash and gold coins was released from Canada Border Services Agency custody last week, after more than a month in a Vancouver-area detention centre.
But the move hasn’t swayed police on plans to recommend charges against Khaled Nawaya under the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act in connection with the Oct. 6 arrest.
“We’re going to be recommending charges under the act. That hasn’t changed,” Insp. Paul Richards of E Division’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Team said Wednesday.
Nawaya, a Syrian who had been living in the U.S. since he was 17, was arrested at the border around 11 p.m. Oct. 6, after officers found coins, cash and sundry items in a northbound traveller’s van that raised suspicions the driver was a possible security threat.
According to transcripts from two Immigration and Refugee Board detention hearings, the items included several 9/11-related videos and a ring bearing the insignia of Hezbollah, which is regarded in Canada as a terrorist organization.
Upon questioning, Nawaya was adamant he had only $10,000 to declare, one transcript notes.
Richards said the police investigation is focused on determining the source and intended use of the cash and gold.
Nawaya’s lawyer, Phil Rankin, said the currency is a combination of savings amassed during his client’s work as a flight instructor in the U.S., and funds from a court settlement in California. Documents confirming the source of all but $250,000 of the money have been produced, Rankin said Wednesday, and work is underway to produce the rest.
Nawaya’s Nov. 12 release was granted with the condition that he submit the outstanding paperwork within 90 days. Richards said police also want to see those documents.
“All of the, sort of, allegations that he’s made about the money... obviously that forms part of what we’re looking at.”
Prior to his arrest, Nawaya had been granted permanent residency in Canada – a lengthy process that included multiple security clearances.
But Rankin said it remains to be seen if Nawaya will ever be allowed to actually “land” in the country. There’s still a chance he could be deported and that he may never get any of the money seized Oct. 6 back, he said.
“He could easily lose all of it,” Rankin said.
Rankin described his client as “definitely loopy” about currency laws. He lied about his money at the border because he was afraid it would be taken from him, Rankin said.
At the same time, Rankin believes, Nawaya would have attracted attention at the border regardless, simply because he was a young, Middle Eastern man who had a lot of money on him.
“I guess he fit a profile. I still think they would have been suspicious of him even if he did everything right,” Rankin said.
Now, “he’s got to prove he’s innocent.”
