BC casino money launderer was 'wrong target' in 2020 homicide.
A notorious casino money launderer who died in a hail of bullets at a Japanese restaurant in Richmond, Metro Vancouver, was not the target, prosecutors say.
Jianjun Zhu ran Silver International, an underground bank with ties to drug cartels that funneled hundreds of millions of dollars through Vancouver-area casinos.
But on September 18, 2020, Zhu was in the wrong place at the wrong time and dining with the wrong people when 25-year-old Richard Reed allegedly shot him with a Norinco 1911 semi-automatic pistol. Seven rounds were fired at the restaurant.
According to prosecutors, the real target was Zhu's associate Paul "King" Kim, an alleged illegal gambling operator who used Baiyin International to launder money. King was injured in the attack but survived.
Murder for Hire
During opening statements in Reed's first-degree murder trial last week, prosecutor Rusty Antonuk said the jury would hear testimony from the defendant's friend, known only as "I." Reed reportedly told me he killed the wrong man.
"I expect the witness will say that Mr. Reed told him that he did it for $6,000 and that the target was sitting in the corner of the glass window and that he shot the wrong person," Antonuk said. "Killed the wrong guy. Now the guy who hired him is frustrated."
Antonuk did not say who hired Reed or why he wanted to kill King. However, he claimed that members of the group who ordered the assassination were in the restaurant when the attack occurred.
"The evidence will show that Mr. Reed had direct and indirect contact with persons inside the restaurant at the time and around the time of the shooting," Antonuk said. "The evidence will show that Mr. Reed was surveilling the restaurant prior to the murder."
Reed also told me that there was another man named "Jas" in the restaurant. "Jas sent Reed a picture of Paul King's injured cheek and said he had killed the wrong person," Antonuk said. explain.
Zhu’s law enforcement failed miserably
Zhu and his wife Qin were charged in 2017 in what was considered the largest money laundering prosecution ever in Canada. It was the culmination of Operation Electronic Piracy, a major RCMP investigation into criminal money laundering networks.
But the case collapsed in 2019 when prosecutors accidentally leaked the name of a key secret government witness during standard discovery procedures. The trial judge stayed the case, finding that continuing the trial would put the witness at "a high risk of death."
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Source: www.casino.org
