British Columbia’s Appeal Court has overturned a lower-court ruling and ordered the Hells Angels motorcycle club to surrender three properties under the province’s Civil Forfeiture Act.
The unanimous decision by a three-member panel issued Wednesday, says a B.C. Supreme Court justice was wrong to find “no evidence” that the Hells Angels’ clubhouses in Nanaimo, Kelowna and Vancouver were used for the planning or commission of criminal activity.
Justice Mary Newbury writes that the lower-court ruling was “tainted” in several ways, including by failing to link Hells Angels’ efforts to avoid criminal detection with the club’s demonstrated “penchant for secrecy” and “preoccupation with rats and snitches.”…