Does Rakesh Saxena Deserve Our Sympathy and Compassion?

Mike Roberts, The Province

Rakesh Saxena, Thailand's most-wanted fugitive, is the subject of the longest-running extradition case in Canadian history.

A recent photo of Indian Thai fugitive Rakesh Saxena.

Over the past 10 years, the infamous financier with the cola-bottle glasses and roguish appearance has blazed a fantastic trail of intrigue and outrage through Canadian courts.

On paper, his legal exploits would take a truck to carry. Highlights of his extradition capers include:

"We're talking about a military dictatorship . . . there's no constitution, none of those guarantees exists any more."-- Amandeep Singh, one of Saxena's Canadian lawyers.  Photo by Wayne Leidenfrost, The Province

1. Beating not one but two federal extradition orders to Thailand.

2. Plotting a counter-coup in Sierra Leone.

3. Allegedly threatening former business associates, including accountant Les Hammond, who was placed under police protection.

4. Demanding -- successfully -- that Canada return $100,000 he was using to bribe Thai police officials.

5. Allegedly scheming to obtain a false Yugoslavian passport while on bail.

6. Suing former lawyer Russ Chamberlain for $12 million over a procedural disagreement.

7. Negotiating a notorious house-arrest arrangement, complete with private guards, approved by B.C. Supreme Court judge Wally Oppal, now B.C.'s attorney-general.

Today, Saxena lives in a glass-and-marble mansion on Richmond's riverfront under self-financed house arrest, at a cost of $50,000 per month.  He is wanted in Thailand on charges he embezzled $88 million from the Bangkok Bank of Commerce as part of a larger $2.2 billion bogus bank-loan scandal.  The alleged swindle not only collapsed the bank, it triggered an Asian financial crisis in 1997 that reportedly cost Thai taxpayers $7 billion.

In the Thai capital of Bangkok, three special government prosecutors are dedicated to bringing Saxena home.  "It's still our No. 1 priority," Piyatida Jermhansa says in an interview with The Province. "We understand that it is your law which provides these delays, your courts of appeal, your minister of justice, and after that he has several kinds of rights.  "We respect the sovereignty and criminal justice of Canada, but we would like to get him back after our long pursuance of the extradition matter."

Back in Canada, Indian-born Saxena, 54, says he is innocent, claiming to be the victim of politically motivated charges.  "The case started because at one stage I indirectly controlled 25 per cent of the [Thai] parliament," he says in an interview with The Province.  "When the government changed, certain MPs revealed things."

Intellectual and intense, Saxena works the international money markets through the night, pausing at times to absorb passages from such books as Lenin, Hegel and Western Marxism, and Communism and Agrarian Reform in Iraq.  While in Thailand, he mixed business and pleasure with some of the country's leading political and business leaders.

He dismisses the case against him as a "mixture of half-truths and stories," and says he has "information that would be quite damaging to some powerful people" in Thailand.  He says the evidence against him is contrived.  

"You should not start extradition with some police documents that were obtained outside the prosecutorial system," he complains.  He says he is a scapegoat for the sins of former cronies and fears both for his personal safety and his ability to obtain a fair trial in Thailand, adding it would take 10 years for his case to go to trail in Thailand.

"I was not a signing authority, I was not an advisor, except for six months," he maintains. "I was trading on insider knowledge, which was not a crime at the time."

Saxena was awaiting word on whether the Supreme Court of Canada would give him a final hearing when the Thai government was overthrown in a military coup last September.  The coup prompted Canada's justice minister to indefinitely suspend his extradition order, even though Thailand has given assurances that he will be treated fairly.

"Mr. Saxena will be tightly protected against anyone who might want to harm him when he steps on the land of Thailand," prosecutor Poravich Makaravatana told The Province.

Frustrated by Canada's slowness, Thailand has adopted a new approach.  Last August, officials set up a money-laundering task force that targeted Saxena's overseas assets.  In November, the team reportedly seized Saxena's $3 million beach house in Thailand's Chon Buri province.

"Nobody has ever come after my assets," says Saxena. "It's all a bunch of lies. It's all fantasy land. It's political . . .  "The land is still under my possession."

One of Saxena's Vancouver lawyers, Amandeep Singh, says he does not buy the assurances from Bangkok.  "We're talking about a military dictatorship . . . there's no constitution, none of those guarantees exists any more," he says.

Saxena's legal team presented two key arguments in its successful submission to the federal justice minister.  One was that under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Saxena cannot be extradited to a country under military dictatorship.  The second was that the extradition treaty between Thailand and Canada was nullified when Thailand allied itself with Japan during World War II.

"I'd go back tomorrow if they'd tell me what crime I'm charged with," he insists, adding he's spent $20 million fighting his extradition.

In Ottawa, the justice minister is still reviewing Saxena's case, a process that could go on for years.

Saxena says he has no interest in staying in Canada.  "What people here can't fathom is why someone wouldn't want to stay," he says, adding he prefers "faster moving" economies.  "Why don't you go after you own people?" he says. "It's pure, undiluted racism."

As for Saxena's novel house-arrest arrangement, Singh says it costs $37,000 a month to keep a person in jail.  "Why should we be paying for Saxena?" he says. "I think he did us a favour."  And the cost to Canadian taxpayers of funding the related legal battles?

Over $10 million -- "easily" -- says Singh.

© The Vancouver Province 2007