Drug courier caught in Project Forseti gets 4 years

A man from British Columbia made a “terrible mistake” by succumbing to financial pressure and using his truck driving business to transport hard drugs to Saskatoon, a Queen’s Bench courtroom heard.

Ruslan Jamal Bakuridze, 32, was, by all accounts, a normal, hardworking person before money troubles led him to make the worst decision of his life, his lawyer said.

Bakuridze pleaded guilty in October to trafficking methamphetamine, heroin and fentanyl and possessing the proceeds of crime. On Thursday, he was sentenced to four years in prison after Justice Mona Dovell accepted the joint sentencing submission proposed by the Crown and defence.

This is a serious crime for a first-time offender and requires a serious sentence, Dovell told Bakuridze, who appeared by video from a B.C. courtroom.

According to an admission of facts presented in court, Bakuridze made two trips from B.C. to Calgary — in October and November of 2014 — with a total of three kilograms of meth, two ounces of heroin and 1,010 fentanyl pills. The drug courier he was told to meet was actually an undercover police officer, federal Crown prosecutor Lynn Hintz said.

Bakuridze collected $126,000 to give to a Vancouver drug dealer who faces several charges in connection with Project Forseti, the 15-month investigation into organized crime in Saskatchewan.

During Project Forseti, police discovered the Fallen Saints motorcycle club was working with the Vancouver drug dealer to traffic narcotics. Hintz said the drugs Bakuridze was transporting were “ordered” by Noel Harder, the former Fallen Saints vice-president who became a police agent in Project Forseti, and were destined for Saskatoon.

“Bakuridze did not function in any capacity other than a drug courier. He did not procure the drugs; mix or weigh the drugs; negotiate the prices or secure buyers,” according to the statement of facts.

Court heard Bakuridze, who emigrated to Canada from Georgia, got involved in drug running after embarking on an entrepreneurial endeavour.

He was trying to dig himself out of a financial hole and did not want to burden his family, defence lawyer Paul Ferguson said.

“I would never do such a thing again. It destroyed my family and I truly apologize from the bottom of my heart,” an emotional Bakuridze told court.

Dovell said she found his remorse to be genuine and his letters of support to be “truly touching.” Both his former and current partners attested to his hard-working nature, and his employers said they will welcome him back once he is released.

Hintz said the joint submission was in line with the three and a half year sentence another B.C. drug courier received last month and balanced mitigating factors, such as Bakuridze’s guilty plea and personal background, with the fact that these are “large quantities of the most serious drugs in Canada.”