Cigarette smuggler avoids mandatory $4-million fine

A Windsor man caught smuggling a truckload of illegal cigarettes across the Ambassador Bridge has avoided a hefty fine prescribed by Canadian law, but only because a judge said he’d have to win the lottery jackpot to pay the nearly $4-million penalty.

“I am not imposing the minimum fine prescribed,” Superior Court Justice George King told lawyers for the Crown and the defence on Wednesday. He said he was “troubled” by the size of the monetary penalty that the federal Excise Act required him to levy. “My concern is that, by imposing a fine that is so significant, it’s unlikely to ever be paid,” King said, adding that by making it impossible to pay, the guilty party “suffers no penalty.” Following trial and court proceedings that stretched out over years, Abdul-Hassan Al Mansory, 46, was found guilty of attempting to enter Canada via the Ambassador Bridge with 13,786 kilograms of unstamped tobacco on Jan. 9, 2013.

Federal prosecutor Jennifer Rooke was seeking a two-year penitentiary term. Al Mansory’s conviction also came with a mandatory minimum fine of $3,719,360. Defence lawyer Rae-Anne Copat conceded a period of incarceration was required but asked that any sentence be served conditionally, or through house arrest.

The financial penalty of nearly $4 million, was “exorbitant,” she added, but the legislation — based on a fine of 27 cents per gram for illegal tobacco at the border — appeared to give no discretionary leeway.

“I’m troubled by your submissions,” said King, who described the massive but mandatory fine as something “amorphous and floating in space,” the imposition of which would “shackle” Al Mansory for the rest of his life.

One of the guiding sentencing principles for such convictions is to hit the offender in the wallet, with an economic penalty against an economic crime to serve as denunciation and as deterrence to others.

But before passing sentence, the judge asked the lawyers to suggest possible alternatives for the court’s consideration.

King then lowered the fine drastically, to $10,000, payable over five years, with a federal victim surcharge (usually 10 per cent) on top. Al Mansory was also handed an 18-month conditional sentence for each of five Customs Act and Excise Act convictions, all of them to be served concurrently. The first nine months of his sentence, the father of five is restricted to his home except for work and emergencies, while the second half of his conditional sentence includes a 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. home curfew. Al Mansory was working for a Windsor-based carrier when a friend named Mark arranged a cargo pickup at a Detroit warehouse. Told it was a shipment of food products, including rice, Al Mansory was directed by two men in an SUV to another warehouse, Mark calling him along the way to tell him everything was all right. He testified at trial that he watched soccer in his cab and slept during the loading of 114 boxes, before departing for his destination of Stoney Creek in Hamilton.

As a first-time shipper, his rig was pulled over by Canadian border agents at the Ambassador Bridge and given an escort to secondary inspection.

After being out on bail for five years without incident and maintaining employment, King said he was confident Al Mansory’s “potential for rehabilitation is high.” Other mitigating factors at sentencing included him being a contributing member to the community who supports his family, as well as the fact it was a first-time conviction on Customs and Excise Act charges.

Born in Iraq in 1972 and then fleeing at 16 to a camp for exiles in Saudi Arabia, where he spent seven years and earned his high school diploma, Al Mansory was accepted into Canada as a refugee. He studied at the University of Ottawa but had to leave for work before graduation with the arrival of his first child. He’s been a commercial trucker since 2006. Aggravating factors at sentencing, said King, were Al Mansory’s two previous criminal convictions in 2003 and 2005 for domestic violence, as well as the “significant amount” of smuggled tobacco. Despite his criticism of the multimillion-dollar fine Canada’s Excise Act would have required the court to impose, the judge said that, when it comes to smuggling a large shipment of unstamped tobacco in a commercial vehicle, there is “a strong need to denounce this action” and that there are “important societal considerations” for why penalties should be stiff. “A porous border is in reality no border,” said King.