Sentence reduced for bank insider

CALGARY• Refusing to accept a plea bargain for a bank teller who provided inside information for robbers, including her boyfriend, was an error, Alberta’s top court ruled Thursday in reducing her sentence.

Kenza Belakziz, 24, was sentenced in June to 18 months in jail for her role in setting up a Nov. 24, 2014, robbery at the Bank of Montreal in Calgary, where she worked. She had earlier pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit robbery by providing confidential information about the bank branch to her then-boyfriend, Saleem Nasery, and Lucas Windsor and Matthew Valdes.

All three men were handed lengthy prison sentences for the armed heist, which involved restraining bank employees with zip ties.

Police nabbed the bandits as they left the bank.

On Thursday, the Alberta Court of Appeal panel agreed with defence lawyer Greg Dunn that Justice David Gates should not have rejected the joint submission put before him on behalf of Belakziz.

Gates said the six-monthless-a-day sentence proposed by Dunn and Crown prosecutors Vicki Faulkner and Ryan Jenkins was so low it would bring the administration of justice into disrepute.

But the appeal judges agreed with Dunn that the sentence, which spares Belakziz automatic deportation to her native Morocco, should have been imposed.

Dunn argued before the appeal court on Monday that if judges don’t accept joint submissions negotiated by Crown and defence lawyers, they take away the certainty that plea bargains provide.

In their written decision, the appeal judges said Gates erred by focusing on the lack of strength of the Crown’s case and not other issues around the need for joint submissions.