Author of the article: Paul Cherry • Montreal Gazette The large commercial building at 9691-9699 St-Laurent Blvd. is one of the properties owned or controlled by Samuel Szlamkowicz and targeted by the Attorney General of Quebec. Photo by Pierre Obendrauf / Montreal Gazette
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Last July, Samuel Szlamkowicz may have thought his problems were over.
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The 73-year-old resident of Hampstead successfully claimed that it took him a long time to be prosecuted by the Crown, after he was accused of cultivating pots illegally in buildings he owned or controlled throughout the city. An indictment filed against him in 2016, alleging that he produced cannabis, was suspended on July 15. The next day, he was acquitted of conspiracy charges in the same case. The rulings were based on the ruling of Jordan, a precedent of the Supreme Court of Canada created in 2016. It set limits on how long a person accused of a crime should wait for his trial. The limit for cases heard in a district court is 18 months and the limit in the Supreme Court is 30 months. But a court statement released to the Montreal court this week reveals that Szlamkowicz’s problems are not over. The Quebec attorney general is seeking to seize five buildings he owns or controls that he claims were part of a network of large marijuana growers, as well as more than $ 193,000 in cash seized when Szlamkowicz was arrested nearly six years ago. According to the latest municipal estimates, the five buildings, including two in the Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grâce district, are worth more than $ 12.3 million.
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Two men who admitted to working under Szlamkowicz operating two of the buildings – one on St-Laurent Blvd. and the other on Parc Ave. – is scheduled to be sentenced in related cases in the coming weeks. The charges against them are part of Project Paprika, a Montreal police investigation that began in 2015 as a money laundering investigation that took place through a currency exchange counter in the city. The investigation eventually took another branch and focused on a five-story building on St-Laurent Blvd. in the municipality of Ahuntsic-Cartierville, where pots were grown illegally on the third and fourth floors as well as in the basement. When it was over, Project Paprika arrested 31 people, including Szlamkowicz. Police seized more than 46,000 cannabis plants and $ 1.4 million in cash.
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When Szlamkowicz was arrested on June 21, 2016, police found more than $ 18,000 in one of his pockets. They also found $ 7,000 in his offices on the Avenue de Courtrai and more than $ 150,000 in cash wrapped in plastic bags in a safe at a TD Bank branch. More than $ 17,000 was seized from another safe at a CIBC branch. “The investigation revealed that (Szlamkowicz) is the manager and / or shareholder in some companies and was a facilitator in an organization that is mainly involved in large-scale cannabis production,” the attorney general wrote in a request for confiscation of money. “With the help of accomplices, (Szlamkowicz) offered turnkey rental services to cannabis growers, including site care, electricity management, cannabis-brewing rubbish, odor and area security.” .
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The attorney general made a similar request for the seizure of five buildings in December. In addition to the building on St-Laurent Avenue, two are located on Avenue de Courtrai near the Walmart Supercentre, one on Parc Avenue in Ahuntsic-Cartierville and another on Victoria Street in Lachine. The request for confiscation of cash reveals that Roger Seepersad, 53, from Montreal, was receiving rent, mainly in cash, from the pot growers and was managing the custodians who were getting rid of the waste produced by the growers. He is scheduled to be sentenced this month. Another man described as one of Szlamkowicz’s accomplices, Sundy Seth, 58, was charged along with several potted growers. He is scheduled to be sentenced in May. When he was arrested, Seth told police he was managing the building on St-Laurent Avenue. for Szlamkowicz. Logesvaran Rajadurai, 73, told police he was the director of the building on Parc Ave. He pleaded guilty to committing a crime in 2018. He was sentenced to two years of suspension and 240 hours of community service. [email protected]
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