Money launderer's case should be tossed for delay, says lawyer

Defence counsel Greg Dunn said the unique circumstances of the case, the fact Fouani pleaded guilty but no facts were read in so no finding of guilt was entered, meant the Jordan guidelines should apply.

The more than two years it has taken to prosecute Calgary deadly ambush victim Talal Fouani on charges relating to money laundering has breached his Charter rights, his lawyer said Wednesday in seeking a judicial stay.

And even if Justice Greg Stirling doesn’t find Fouani’s case falls within the framework of the Supreme Court decision on unreasonable delay timelines, his client should be given a break on sentencing, defence counsel Greg Dunn said.

But Crown prosecutor Shelley Tkatch said the biggest chunk of delay caused in Fouani’s case was his decision last November to fire his previous lawyer after an unfavourable ruling from Stirling.

Fouani fired defence counsel Yoav Niv last Nov. 15, moments after the Calgary Court of Justice judge denied an application to remove himself from the case due to a reasonable apprehension of bias.

That was just one of a dozen applications Niv had proposed after Fouani pleaded guilty on March 17, 2023, to a money laundering charge.

Tkatch said the only time period Stirling needs to consider in determining if the Calgary businessman’s Charter rights were violated is the year and a half since Fouani’s guilty plea since the Supreme Court’s guidelines in the Jordan decision only deal with trial delay.

Most of that, she said, is consumed by the period following Niv’s sudden firing and the need for Dunn to be retained and then get up to speed on the file.

“Our position is from the date Mr. Niv was fired to today’s date is defence delay,” Tkatch said.

Dunn said the unique circumstances of the case, the fact Fouani pleaded guilty but no facts were read in so no finding of guilt was entered, meant the Jordan guidelines should apply.

The Supreme Court found cases that took more than 18 months to conclude at the provincial level presumptively violated an accused person’s right to be tried within a reasonable amount of time.

The lawyer said none of the applications brought forward by Niv, including seeking a blanket publication ban because of issues surrounding the ambush of Fouani and the murder of his wife outside their southwest home, weren’t frivolous.

“I have not seen a publication ban (application) like that before, but this was a unique circumstance, this is an accused who was the subject of an assassination attempt. He was shot in the head; his wife was killed,” Dunn said.

“The applications did not contribute to a delay in the proceedings.”

Fouani’s charges were already before the court when he and his wife, Nakita Baron, were ambushed outside their home the morning of Aug. 18, 2022.

An individual has been charged, but no motive for the attack has been revealed.

Stirling will hand down a ruling in November and either enter a stay, or proceed to a sentencing hearing on the money laundering charge.