Hear no evil, see no evil — especially when it comes to your son being kidnapped by a Mexican cartel, jetsetting to Dubai and allegedly running a transnational cocaine smuggling operation.
That seems to be the philosophy of Gurpreet Singh’s father who is a proposed surety for his son, wanted in the U.S. for allegedly arranging the transportation of hundreds of kilos of cocaine into Canada on behalf of Ryan Wedding, the former Canadian Olympian snowboarder accused of running a $1-billion drug cartel.
Kulwant Singh told a Toronto court he’s willing to pledge $1.6 million and will closely monitor his son if he’s freed on bail while he fights extradition — but after hours of cross-examination by Crown attorney Kiran Gill, it was painfully obvious the father knows very little about his 30-year-old high-living offspring and his “pretty dangerous” colleagues.
Among the many topics he admitted little knowledge of: Singh’s girlfriend, where they live in Toronto, whether they have children, what either does for a living and where he gets the money to drive a Cadillac Escalade, stay in five-star hotels and travel for weeks on end to Dubai and Mexico.
Singh was caught up in a U.S. investigation, dubbed “Operation Giant Slalom,” which claims Wedding, known as El Jefe, and his lieutenant and fellow Canadian Andrew “the Dictator” Clark, and others conspired to ship hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Southern California to Canada through a GTA-based drug transportation network run by Hardeep Ratte, 45, of Brampton and his nephew, Singh.
Wedding and Clark are also accused of using hitmen to settle scores in Canada — including the 2023 Caledon murders of Jagtar Sidhu, 57 and his wife Harbhajan, 55, who were visiting from India and mistaken for a courier who had ripped them off.
While Wedding remains one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives, Ratte and Singh were among a dozen of his alleged associates arrested last fall.
Thanks to an informer who has since been murdered, the FBI alleges the uncle and nephew arranged couriers to bring two shipments of Wedding’s cocaine from California into Canada last year — the first haul contained 293 kilos of coke and the second, which was intercepted by police, amounted to 375 kilograms. All together, the cargo would have had a street value of $9 million US, court heard, and their shipping fee was allegedly between $175,000 and $225,000 per load.
If convicted, Singh is looking at between 20 and 25 years in a U.S. prison.
His father told the court he found out about his son’s arrest from the news; he wasn’t aware police located him at the St. Regis Hotel downtown or that he’d lived at the Shangri La, another five-star hotel, in the past.
The prosecutor asked his father how he felt when he heard what his son is facing. He said it was “kind of a shock.”
He admitted it’s not the first time Singh has been in trouble with the law. He was arrested for assaulting someone at a Tim Horton’s in 2012, had an impaired driving and a domestic assault charge in 2014 as well as a failure to comply. He was also the victim of a shooting that year.
In 2019, the dad turned to Caledon police for advice on how to deal with his son’s anger issues and prevent him from “harming” the family and eventually asked him to leave their home.
Their relationship improved, he said, but they didn’t discuss his travels, including three recent extended trips to Dubai. The Crown has alleged Singh has ties to organized crime in the country.
And what about that trip last summer to Mexico when court heard Singh was held hostage by a cartel because he owed them money and his girlfriend had to raise $400,000 to pay his ransom?
“He did not give me details,” he said through a Punjabi interpreter.
“I mean, this is scary information,” an incredulous Gill said. “Did you not want to report it to police or take some kind of action about it?”
His father insisted he did “not give a thought to it.”
“It sounds like he’s involved, if the allegations are true, with some pretty dangerous people,” the prosecutor continued. “You’ve heard the allegation that the organization that he worked with has hired hit men to take out people that are against their interests…then learning that very recently, in the summer, your son was abducted, does this not cause you any concerns for your safety?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
The bail hearing continues Friday.