The Biden administration’s sweeping attack on global fentanyl trafficking syndicates emanating from Chinese factories has also implicated Canada’s central involvement, singling out a Vancouver drug lab owner, whose realtor wife was stabbed to death in 2022, after the couple evaded a British Columbia civil forfeiture case that saw seizures of fentanyl, cocaine, chemical precursors, and a drug press, along with their mountainside mansion and luxury vehicles.
On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced numerous indictments and Treasury Department sanctions against 28 people and companies, including eight chemical companies in China, their executives and alleged Chinese transnational drug-trafficking bosses.
The indictments charge a web of chemical factories across China, from Wuhan to Anhui and Hubei and Jiangsu, and reveal how the traffickers running these companies have sold fentanyl precursors to undercover D.E.A. agents requesting shipments into Mexican drug labs.
While the Sinaloa Cartel is a major distributor for Chinese fentanyl ravaging American communities and causing tens of thousands of deaths annually, the only major targets outside mainland China named in the D.E.A.’s new investigations are Vancouver-area convict Bahman Djebelibak, 41, and his Port Coquitlam-based lab and chemical distribution facilities.
“Fentanyl is the deadliest drug threat the United States has ever faced,” Garland said at a press conference in Washington, billed as a “message on behalf of the U.S. government” to China and anyone else involved in “trafficking of fentanyl at every stage and in every part of the world.”
“We know that this network includes the cartels’ leaders, their drug traffickers, their money launderers, their clandestine lab operators, their security forces, their weapons suppliers, and their chemical suppliers,” Garland continued. “And we know that this global fentanyl supply chain, which ends with the deaths of Americans, often starts with chemical companies in China.”
One of the Chinese companies sanctioned by the Treasury Department, Jinhu Minsheng Pharmaceutical Machinery, has allegedly been selling pill press machines used to manufacture counterfeit oxycodone, case records say.
“A major customer of Jinhu Minsheng’s is Western Canada-based Valerian Labs, Inc., which is led by Canadian national Bahman Djebelibak,” documents cited by Garland say.
The records allege Djebelibak, aka Bobby Shah, is a major actor in Chinese fentanyl syndicate networks, and he is accountable for “the international proliferation of illicit drugs or their means of production.”
The U.S. government is seeking Djebelibak’s arrest and the charges have not been proven yet in court, documents say.
These records charge that Djebelibak and his Port Coquitlam-based lab, also known as Hollywood Vape Labs, sought to procure “2,000 liters of chloroform, 800 liters of dichloromethane, and 200 kg of iodine, substances used in the production of fentanyl, heroin, and methamphetamine.”
The records add, “notably, Valerian Labs Distribution Corp. has imported chemicals from Hebei Guanlang [another] member of the Syndicate targeted.”
The Bureau’s review of Canadian legal records finds that Djebelibak and his deceased wife, Ramina Shah, were caught up in March 2018 federal police raids of Valerian Labs and the couple’s suburban-Vancouver mansion, which led to a failed B.C. civil forfeiture action.
The case was dismissed in 2021 after B.C. provincial Judge David St. Pierre found police searches had violated the couple’s Charter rights.
There is no indication, however, that St. Pierre balanced his decision by considering the stunning killing power of the fentanyl, chemical precursors and lab equipment allegedly discovered by police, as they executed search warrants stemming from a financial fraud probe against Djebelibak.
At the couple’s $2.9 million mountainside mansion in Maple Ridge, officers seized a Land Rover, a Porsche and a 2006 Pontiac G6, fraudulently registered to one of Djebelibak’s associates, who was involved in Djebelibak’s scheme of trading cash and luxury items for cheques, Canadian court records say.
In a hidden compartment of the Pontiac, officers found about two kilograms of fentanyl, a one-kilo brick of cocaine, and chemicals used to cut cocaine for street dealing.
Officers also found axes in Djebelibak’s mansion, one of which was kept in the couple’s bedroom.
During searches of the mansion and Valerian Labs, officers also discovered pieces of gold and silver jewellery and suspected drug-trafficking paraphernalia, including “score sheets” and cellphones, a hydraulic press covered in drug residue, blank cheques and bank cards in the names of other people, a credit card machine and printer, and money transfer papers.
Police also found a “5-gallon drum of sodium borohydride, which can be used as a cutting agent for controlled substances such as ecstasy, located behind stacks of containers at Hollywood Vape Labs,” B.C. civil forfeiture records say.
The provincial judge — in hindsight perhaps foolishly — gave the benefit of the doubt to the couple, on how they earned a living.
He discounted evidence that officers executing search warrants found tax returns indicating the couple only claimed about $20,000 each in annual income, which could not possibly explain how they afforded luxury assets, including a mansion, Range Rover, Porsche.
The judge, apparently referring to Hollywood Vape Labs and Valerian Labs, explained: “It was known that Mr. and Mrs. Shah owned or co-owned several private (apparently legitimate) business enterprises.”
In January 2022, a year after the civil forfeiture case was dropped, Shah was found stabbed to death in a parkade in Coquitlam, not far from Valerian Labs.
Her contact appears to be listed on the website of Hollywood Vape Labs — evidently still active — which declares itself a “proudly Canadian” business, founded in 2015.
At the time of her murder, Ramina Shah was working in real estate. Police say they are continuing to investigate her murder.
Djebelibak ’s B.C. court records indicate he has been convicted for using counterfeit money. The Vancouver Sun — reporting on Ramina Shah’s case — said her husband was acquitted in a 2002 stabbing in Kelowna after a judge said it was impossible to determine who was holding the knife when the other man was injured.
A request for comment on the U.S. government allegations against Valerian and Djebelibak was not immediately answered on Wednesday.
“These eight cases are the result of DEA’s efforts to attack the fentanyl supply chain where it starts — in China,” Drug Enforcement Administration head Anne Milgram said Tuesday, at the Garland press conference. “Chinese chemical companies are fueling the fentanyl crisis in the United States by sending fentanyl precursors, fentanyl analogues … into our country and into Mexico. DEA will not stop until we defeat this threat.”
of all the places to not have easy access to healthcare....