BURST
Surrey Hells Angel Jaswinder Basi has been charged with uttering threats, though police are not commenting on the circumstances that led to his recent arrest.
Basi, 40, was a member of the Haney chapter of the B.C. Hells Angel, though last year he moved to Ontario to join the Nomads chapter there. He splits his time between the two provinces, according to sources.
The B.C. court online database shows that Basi is accused of making threats to cause death or bodily harm on March 25 in Surrey.
The charge was sworn against him on April 18 and he was arrested a day later while driving a Ford Focus in Cloverdale. He was ordered released on bail on April 19 with a followup court appearance scheduled for May 14.
Surrey Police Service spokesman Ian MacDonald said he couldn’t comment on the Basi charge and arrest because “this is part of an ongoing investigation.”
Basi owns at least two Lower Mainland businesses.
Some of his former Haney chapter-mates have also faced recent run-ins with the law.
Last year, Courtenay Lafreniere was sentenced to three years in prison for possession of property obtained by crime. The charge stemmed from an eight-month-long investigation by the anti-gang Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit.
The probe into a group believed to be involved in a large-scale, interprovincial drug-trafficking operation began in 2020.
During a July 2021 search, CFSEU officers found $65,570 in Lafreniere’s Maple Ridge home, according to a civil forfeiture lawsuit filed in 2022. Some of it was bundled with elastic bands. There was also benzocaine, cocaine and 2.4 kilograms of cannabis.
All but $5,000 of the cash was forfeited to the B.C. government in December, court records indicate.
Another longtime Haney Hells Angel, Vincenzo Sansalone, was sentenced in December 2023 to four years in jail for trafficking in a controlled substance. The charge stemmed from a joint Canada-U. S. transnational organized crime investigation conducted by the RCMP’s B.C. federal serious and organized crime unit and U.S. authorities.
And Haney member Damion Ryan is awaiting trial in custody in Manitoba, where police allege he had a role in a major interprovincial drug trafficking operation. His trial is scheduled for September 2025.
Ryan was also charged in the U.S. last year with being part of an unsuccessful murder-for-hire plot targeting two Iranian dissidents living there.
The U.S. indictment says Ryan was working for Iranian drug lord Naji Zindashti — on orders from the Iranian government — and alleges he was recorded on an encrypted device agreeing to put together a team to do the hit for $350,000 US, plus $20,000 in expenses.
Other B.C. Hells Angels have also been charged or convicted in recent years, including B.C. Nomad Francisco Batista Pires, 62, charged in March with one count of keeping an illegal gaming house.
The B.C. bikers are still being impacted by the forfeiture of Hells Angels clubhouses in Nanaimo, Kelowna and east Vancouver to the provincial government in 2023 after a long-running lawsuit.
Since then, the former east Vancouver clubhouse on East Georgia has been listed and sold and both the Nanaimo and Kelowna clubhouses have been demolished.