Law society suspends licence of Deepak Paradkar, Ontario lawyer tied to alleged drug lord Ryan Wedding
CBC
The Law Society of Ontario has suspended the licence of Deepak Paradkar, one of seven Canadians arrested in connection with alleged drug lord Ryan Wedding’s cocaine smuggling ring.
The decision came down in a virtual hearing Friday morning.
Paradkar was picked up by RCMP officers last month and now faces extradition to the United States to face charges in the Central District of California.
He was represented at the hearing by his lawyer Ravin Pillay, who replaced Paradkar as defence counsel on the high-profile Tim Bosma murder case in Hamilton back in 2016.
Pillay said the suspension would “not be contested” by his client — but he also noted that Paradkar maintains his innocence, and plans to "vigorously defend” himself on the criminal charges. None of the allegations have been tested in court.
Bernadette Saad, senior lead discipline counsel with the law society, said that given the “extremely serious allegations” levied against Paradkar and the strength of the evidence against him, an interlocutory suspension of his licence to practice law was appropriate.
“These all strike at the heart of the administration of justice and the public interest in the administration of justice,” Saad said.
Paradkar is facing allegations of advising Wedding and his second-in-command Andrew Clark to murder an FBI witness to avoid extradition from Mexico.
Wedding, an ex-Canadian Olympian from Thunder Bay, Ont., is listed as one of the FBI’s 10 most-wanted fugitives. He is accused, according to a U.S. indictment, of offering “a multi-million-dollar bounty” for the death of an FBI witness, who was gunned down in Medellin, Colombia, in January of this year.
The witness was meant to testify against Wedding in a separate case, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release issued last month.
The indictment also alleges Paradkar provided Wedding and Clark with court documents and access to individuals "either arrested, indicted or under investigation” through attorneys he secured to represent them.
Paradkar is scheduled for a bail hearing next week. Lawyers for the Department of Justice Canada have said they are opposing his release.
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