An Open Letter to David Basi and Bob Virk
Contributed by: Coyote
Scheduled for Trial in June, 2006

Gentlemen,

Mark Hume in the April 25, 2005 edition of the Globe and Mail wrote, “ The biggest political scandal in Canada may not lie in Quebec, where the Gomery Commission is laying bare a tawdry tale of misdirected funds, but in British Columbia where a conservative judiciary is suppressing information about alleged drug dealing, money laundering, and influence peddling.”

I am sure that there are none more intimately familiar with this issue, of course, and its details than yourselves-, knowing even what we may never know fully. (The last I heard you are both scheduled to go to trial on these particulars sometime in June of this year.) The allegations involving, or at least the search warrant ITO (Information to Obtain) released by the police in September of 2004, says that your old compatriot Erik Bornman offered you help in obtaining $100,000 a year jobs with the Federal Liberal government, in exchange for obtaining confidential information about the BCRail deals.   More

Count three in the Information to Obtain of this December 21, 2004 indictment against yourselves, David and Bob, also alleges that you “…accepted from a person who has dealing the the government rewards, advantages and benefits being money, meals, travel and employment opportunities without having received the consent in writing of the head of the branch of government of which he is an official, contrary to Section 121 (1) of the Criminal Code.”

Bruce Clark, the brother of the former BC Liberal Deputy Premier to Gordon Campbell at the time of the raids, Christy Clark, according to the same police ITO, was also believed to be in possession of information obtained from you, specifically David Basi,regarding the sale of BC Rail’s Port Subdivision at Roberts Bank, another privatization deal worth between $70million and $100 million. Indeed sufficient credibility was given to this information that the BC Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon was forced to cancel the sale after the RCMP said an ongoing criminal investigation revealed the process of this sale was tainted by “advisors” to a bidder obtaining confidential information.

Actually even, the sworn ITO statement by RCMP Corporal Andrew Cowan states that, “I believe that Clark received documentation pertaining to a Request for Proposal and presentations regarding Roberts Bank. I believe that Clark has had meetings with Basi and received these documents from Basi.”

By the by, perhaps as ironic to yourselves as myself, Bruce Clark was returned to an executive position with the Liberal Party of Canada in BC, in charge of finance. Perhaps as just a measure of the contempt these people hold public concerns here anyway. Which contempt you may share, I do not know.

In any case the greatest and final irony to yourselves has got to be that the key witness against yourselves for the Crown is your old buddy/associate, Erik Bornman, well connected BC and Federal Liberal activist, and a registered provincial lobbyist for Omnitrax, the US based rail company that was bidding for BC Rail against the winner who finally emerged out of all the intrigue and attempts to save face and cover butts CN Rail and CP Rail. (Who, as you both of course know, had previously dropped out of the bidding because of what it said was a clear breach of “fairness” in the process due to other bidders receiving confidential information.) And I’m assuming the two of you already know, though the public reading this may need to be brought up to speed, that your old pal Erik was also a registered lobbyist for the Employers Forum of BC, the Council of Forest Industries (COFI), Western Canadian Shippers Coalition, the Broe Companies Inc (Owners of Omnitrax), the BC Real Estate Association, Famous Players, the Certified General Accountants Association of BC, and Cap Gemini Ernst &Young.)

Were I you, I would certainly now be thinking eh, oh what a tangled web we weave? Funny on one level, but not another, for sure.

In any case, the intrigue, double dealing and layered levels of criminality involved here I could go on and on with, but really I just want to “jog” your memories and connect us to sufficient events here that I can talk to you on quite another level, and in quite another direction. You will know as much and more than I about all this layering of private enterprise, crime and Liberal Party corruption, of course, which many of us ordinary citizenry know very little of and can scarcely imagine as a consequence of our relatively sheltered and naïve lives. Though, through the scamming off of heretofore “public assets” by these “private interests” which you seem to have served, we are coming to know. we as “the public” are now certainly the poorer, thanks to yourselves and the machinations of others, including such as Erik Bornman himself, I have no doubt, this latter whom will walk away now virtually untouched and squeaky clean, even after now testifying against yourselves.

Which must certainly be a piss off at some level for you two, leaving something of a bitter taste in your mouths, as mere bit players here, I am sure, and certainly it must rankle and leave a wish for revenge there in some dark corner of your hearts. It sure as hell would me.

Which is really why I wanted to write this open letter to yourselves, in the hopes that it can somehow be gotten to you to read, and to invite you to listen both to that dark little voice which I know I would have there, screaming out for revenge against the at least skewed “incomplete justice” of your situation, where you are now to be the sacrificial lambs, while the much bigger fish that are there to fry, we both know, walk away to enrich themselves in another corruption scam another day. Eh? It really has got to be eating away at your souls at some high level? The huge injustice done here that will never see the light of day.

Unless…. Unless there is a way which two birds can be gotten with the one stone here.

First, as a person with some sympathy for your position, for we all sometimes come up short of our potential, I invite you to redeem yourselves, by reaching into yourselves to what I hope is some existing fundamental degree or level of honesty, which most of us, at least, like and need to see ourselves in. Redeem and address the larger community and public interest here, by exposing the rot we both know is at the heart of this largely bullshit “democratic” and haughtily superior “private enterprise system” of economy and governance deal making that is akin to criminality. I do not naively urge you to entirely ignore your lawyers, who have their own interest no doubt, and presumably yours at some level, and one does certainly not spend unnecessary amounts of time in jail or incur family destroying court and other costs I know, but nonetheless… There is a balance which may be struck here, depending how deep you are already standing in the shit, which may not yet do that much harm to your own interest, and yet may advance as well or enlighten the community or public one as well. Within the extent to which it is possible for you, I ask that you do the “right” thing, enlighten the public to these scams and outright rip-offs that have been going on against their interests and to their harm-, and at the same time afford an opportunity to scratch that “revenge itch”, which certainly has to be there as well.

Anyway, think about it David and Bob Virk. There is a need for justice for us, the public, for sure. But also for yourselves, not?

Anyway, think about it. Take as many of these shysters down with you as you can. Look after yourselves, of course, but also… to the degree it is possible for you.