The Attorney General is seeking $ 12.5 million in cash, owned by a man from Hampstead

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The chief prosecutor claims that five buildings owned or controlled by Samuel Shlamkovic are part of a network of large-scale marijuana operations.

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Paul Cherry • Montreal Gazette The large commercial building at 9691-9699 St-Laurent Blvd. is one of the properties owned or controlled by Samuel Schlamkovic, which is the target of Quebec’s attorney general. Photo by Pierre Obendrauf / Montreal Gazette

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Last July, Samuel Schlamkovic may have thought his problems were over.

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The 73-year-old Hampstead resident has successfully argued that it took the Crown too long to prosecute after he was accused of illegally growing flower pots in buildings he owns or controls throughout the city. The indictment against him in 2016, allegedly for producing cannabis, was dropped on July 15. The next day, he was acquitted on charges of conspiracy in the same case.

The rulings are based on a ruling by Jordan, a precedent set by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2016. It sets limits on how long a person accused of a crime has to wait for his trial. The term for hearing cases in a provincial court is 18 months, and in the Supreme Court is 30 months.

But a court case made public in the Montreal courthouse this week reveals that Schlamkovic’s problems are far from over. The Quebec Attorney General wants to confiscate five buildings he owns or controls that they say are part of a network of large-scale marijuana operations, as well as more than $ 193,000 in cash seized when Shlamkovic was arrested before nearly six years. According to the latest municipal estimates, the five buildings, including two in the Côte de Nege-Notre-Dame-de-Grasse district, cost more than $ 12.3 million.

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Two men who admitted to working for Schlamkovic, running two of the buildings – one on St-Laurent Blvd. and the other on Parc Ave. – are scheduled to be convicted in related cases in the coming weeks.

The charges against them are part of Project Paprika, a police investigation in Montreal that began in 2015 as a money laundering investigation conducted through the city’s currency exchange counters. The investigation eventually took over another branch and focused on a five-story building on St-Laurent Blvd. in the Ahunsik-Cartierville district, where pots were grown illegally on the third and fourth floors, and in the basement.

When it ended, Project Paprika led to the arrests of 31 people, including Shlamkovic. Police confiscated more than 46,000 cannabis plants and $ 1.4 million in cash.

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When Shlamkovic 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 Boulevard de Courtrai and more than $ 150,000 in cash, packed 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 an administrator and / or shareholder in certain companies and was an intermediary in an organization dealing in particular with the production of cannabis on a large scale,” the prosecutor general wrote in a request for confiscation of the money.

“With the help of partners (Szlamkowicz), it offered turnkey rental services to cannabis growers, including space care, electricity management, cannabis-derived waste, the smell and security of the area.

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The prosecutor general made a similar request to confiscate five buildings in December. In addition to the St-Laurent building, two are on the Boulevard de Courtrai near the Walmart Super Center, one on Parc Ave. in Ahuntsic-Cartierville and another is on Victoria St. in Lachine.

The request for the confiscation of the money reveals that Roger Sippersad, 53, from Montreal, collected rent, mostly in cash, from potted growers and managed the custodians who got rid of the waste the growers produced. He is expected to be convicted this month.

Another man described as one of Schlamkovic’s accomplices, 58-year-old Sandy Seth, was charged along with several potted growers. His sentence is expected in May. When he was arrested, Seth told police he was running the building on St-Laurent Blvd. for Shlamkovich.

Logeswaran Rajadurai, 73, told police he was the manager of the Parc Ave building. He pleaded guilty to a felony in 2018. He was sentenced to two years of probation and 240 hours of community service.

pcherry@postmedia.com

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