Transcription
So, friends, once again, a very warm welcome to all of you on your own Punjabi channel, Hind Punjab, and I, Baljit Parmar, am present. A few days ago, we made a video about Winnipeg, Canada.
The second part of that story was left incomplete because other important news came up that needed immediate coverage. Today, we will return to that husband and wife duo who did some things that most people would not want to do: drug dealing, tax evasion, earning millions of Canadian dollars, but ultimately ending up behind bars.
We were talking about Ravi Aulakh, who is from British Columbia, and his wife, Harpreet Mangat, who is from the other side of the country, Winnipeg, Manitoba. They were arrested, and maybe they have gotten bail. I was checking, but I didn’t find any news. If there had been any news, at least some information would have been available, or perhaps the case is delayed and will run a long time. It’s a very big and wide-ranging case; we told you everything. Six people were caught in this multi-million dollar drug and arms racket.
Now, you people ask us many questions in our comment box; how did they earn so much money so quickly? Other people also do business, opening small corner shops—how did they earn millions of dollars from there? When we investigated, made inquiries, and spoke to local people, they told us many things. This couple is quite famous; their deeds and exploits are well known to the people of Winnipeg.
Friends, first of all, let me tell you how they earned this money. Especially Harpreet Mangat, whose children currently live in British Columbia with their grandparents. This husband and wife duo only do this work, moving drugs and weapons around. They were sitting in jail the previous days. Friends, what did Mangat do? She would rent or buy a small store, especially in slum areas. You will be surprised to know that even in Canada, there are slums. Yes, there are many such areas in different cities where people live on government money, receiving dole; they don’t do any work, they always have some excuse or other, or some such profession where there is no employment, no other work is available. They get government assistance every month or week, or whatever the schedule is. They live in poor areas and make their living. Many people live in small houses, some live in the forests. So, in these poor settlements, according to Canadian standards, in the areas where the poor live, they opened more stores.
This had two advantages: people who are knowledgeable or socially aware, when they see someone committing a crime, inform the police. But here, in poor areas, in slum areas, or in less affluent areas, in the lower middle class, people don't care. Whatever they get, they eat and drink.
Now, friends, the two things they mainly did with their business; nominally, the store's name was a convenience store where everything was available. But their main business was selling cannabis and tobacco. Mangat, now you will be surprised to know how you can make money selling cannabis and tobacco. Along with this, you might be seeing some pictures. You must have seen a green-colored packet in the picture running alongside. Friends, this contains cannabis. Cannabis is legal in certain areas of Canada; you can sell cannabis with government-controlled pricing, subject to certain conditions; it cannot be sold to underage children. And cigarettes, which we call tobacco products. Sometimes YouTube objects to and does not allow the display of cigarettes, so I am using the word “tobacco”. This tobacco product cannot be given to anyone under 18 years of age or below the legal age. Friends, both things are otherwise expensive, especially tobacco products are very expensive. A packet, say of a name brand like the branded products you have in India for tobacco products. They make counterfeit products in some states, like Quebec and others; the Italian mafia makes them. They make slight changes in the spelling, and from the outside, it looks like a branded product, like Surf, which runs in India; SCRF. If you write it as SCRF, it is sold in villages, and nobody knows. The same design, everything is the same, only a letter of spelling is changed. Similarly, a very famous tobacco product, Marlboro, we can change one letter: instead of Marlboro, make it Malbro. Except for that one letter, the entire shape, color, color scheme of the packet is copied; the counterfeit product is very cheap.
Suppose a branded tobacco product costs 20 Canadian dollars. These people sell the counterfeit product for five dollars. But even five dollars is not available with people in poor colonies. Then they buy loose tobacco sticks and increase their prices. Now, let me tell you, these counterfeit tobacco products are very cheap to make, and they are sold at the price of the original product. A packet that costs five dollars is sold for 20 or 30 dollars. Imagine the profit margin. If you sell this type of product in a rich area, a city like Toronto, Brampton, or the main area of Winnipeg, you could get caught because educated people, regular smokers, know the taste, spelling, and price. They will carefully examine everything and check the price. Now, all the work is of a dubious nature; they cannot show it in their stock, where they buy it from; they don’t keep records; they sell it surreptitiously.
And all these things, cannabis and tobacco products, this woman didn’t keep them on the counter of her store. Every shop they have has some accommodation behind the shop. They make it a storeroom. When someone comes to buy, whatever quantity they need, one of their men goes to the back room, takes out the required quantity and gives it to them. It's hidden very cleverly, and they have regular customers in the areas where they open shops. They know who buys these things every day. They sell tobacco products, even single sticks, from the packet. Similarly, with cannabis, the packet you are seeing is a one-pound packet, whose price is about three Canadian dollars on average, depending on the quality. As far as I have been told, I don’t know, I have never smoked cannabis in my life, nor have I ever gone to Canada. Whatever information friends and sources gave me, we are sharing it with you. From 250 to 400 to 500, such is the price range. They sell it by the pound here; we use kilograms, they use pounds. One pound is approximately half a kilogram. The price of one pound is about 2.5 Canadian dollars. They don’t sell full packets; poor people wouldn’t pay 250 dollars for half a pound. What they do is take the one-pound packet, worth 250 dollars, and make small packets of one or two grams, just as drugs are sold here, in grams; the price depends on the quality: heroin, another thing, this, another. Because these shops are in poor areas. Now, if you consider 500 grams as one pound, and two grams cost two dollars, so one gram is 10 dollars. With this calculation, they buy it for 250 dollars (half a pound) and sell it for 4000-5000 dollars. They don’t keep accounts. They take the money and are done.
The issue is that they exploit poor people who have just enough money to eat and pay rent. Whatever little is left, they buy a little cannabis and smoke it, taking two, four, five, or seven grams. And with it, they smoke tobacco and mix other drugs. So, this is their basic business, where the profit margin is so high, and you don't have to pay any tax because it is an illegal product, you are selling a legal product illegally. So now, they have five or seven stores; we will show you their photos. They are in different areas of the city, in poor areas. Small stores; they sell pizza as well; it’s a convenience store, and many places have both together, a place to live behind, a store, goods are kept there; their cars and pickup trucks stand there.
This is a very systematic setup; there are cameras, CCTV cameras; everything is monitored. These five to seven small stores were opened in poor areas and slums. This is what they did. You see these pictures of small stores; if this was in India, nobody would want to enter, but they made millions of dollars from here.
Now, friends, you will understand how a single woman managed so many stores. We will tell you that in each store, they kept boys and girls who needed jobs. They handled the entire business. All the illegal goods are sold at the behest of this Mangat. Now you might think they don't cheat. The owner is not always present; the employees sell. And the employees they keep are poor children, students, many of whom are Punjabis, some others as well. They need jobs, so they work there.
Now, friends, these stores may look discreet from the outside, small, old, dilapidated. But inside, their system is very advanced. Cameras are installed everywhere, surveillance cameras monitoring everything in the store. Some cameras are behind the store, where tobacco and cannabis are kept. Every single thing is captured on camera: how much quantity was taken from the store to the shop; how much money the boy or girl at the counter received; what was given, and the cash register machine; how much money was put in and taken out; everything is recorded by CCTV cameras.
Friends, this is such a perfect system that even a single penny cannot be stolen by the employee. Wherever the employee goes, to get goods or do anything, every movement is captured on CCTV cameras. And all their stores are places where illegal activities are carried out. All of them have CCTV camera surveillance. You will be amazed to hear that it is said that the control of all these cameras is from a city in Punjab, perhaps Firozpur. Amazing, this Firozpur connection. Today’s technology is very advanced. The entire camera footage is monitored from Firozpur. There’s a surveillance control room there, perhaps run by a relative who is given a good amount of money for monitoring. This is not just for them, but for many others. I know many people who have a lot of property lying vacant in Punjab and abroad. Especially in Uttar Pradesh, a friend of mine has a huge, old ancestral mansion with 110-12 rooms. They have installed cameras there. They live in England, and they see their entire mansion on the screen all day long. If someone enters their mansion to steal something, they immediately call their relative, the local SP, whose number they had obtained. Wealthy people know each other. He immediately calls the SP. The SP calls the station house officer of that area, and the police arrest them red-handed. So this is not a big deal; a lot is happening these days. All the monitoring of these stores is done from a control room in Firozpur.
And one advantage of keeping it in Firozpur is that if a raid occurs—say, an income tax raid, a drug department raid, or a similar raid by the police—a message is immediately sent to Firozpur. They delete all the data, leaving no evidence. All the cameras are blanked. Whatever is happening at that moment only runs; there is no memory of anything else. Everything is deleted. What was sold last week is not recorded; the department will not get any information. So these are the advantages. Second, when the cash register is closed, the money that is in the shop is placed in a large safe, which is automatic and remotely controlled. Numbered people handle it. It’s a sophisticated system. The till is emptied; notes are put in. Different denominations of currency are placed in different compartments of a large safe. After a week, it's all taken out of the large safes and moved to another location where an elderly person connected to the family—basically from Firozpur—collects all the money. They have three or four note-counting machines and coin-counting machines. So much cash is collected; there are no checks or credit cards used. If credit cards were used, it would be recorded. Heaps of cash in various denominations are collected. Then the elderly person sits and counts the money with the machines. They then systematically deposit it in another large safe, which they have kept at their location. Then, the payments are made—in cash—to the Italian mafia who sends them tobacco sticks and cannabis. There’s no record, no threat.
Now, friends, when they were caught, a panic situation arose. To prevent the economic offenses or drug-related agencies from seizing their property, before that could happen, they put their property up for sale. Here is their notice: "Rare investment opportunity". There are local sales and purchase companies; it's in local newspapers and social media. Century 31 21 is an organization that helps in buying and selling property. They listed their property for sale; we will show you its picture. So friends, this property is named Pizza Center. It operates day and night, 24 hours. Someone was running it. But the same activities continued there. They put it up for sale; they gave its address, everything. You will be amazed to hear the price. This small shop costs 179,000 Canadian dollars—180,000 Canadian dollars. They wrote further that this is a turn-key pizza business for sale in a prime location with strong revenue and huge potential. They are saying they are selling for a reason; they wanted to expand with a convenience store; there is space. They’re tempting the buyer; there’s more space for expansion, two shops can be made from one. They were building a store but changed their mind. It’s a great opportunity to run a good business; the owner is absent, ready for you to plug and play. Establishment for endless growth opportunity; prime location with space for a deal business. This temptation was given to them; a man named Karmesh Munga placed this advertisement in the sales and purchase accounts.
The price, as I told you, is 180,000 Canadian dollars. They will sell all the properties one by one. One or two are possibly already under action; they sent those to the government earlier, and saved the money. This is a way to save the properties from confiscation. We can call this liquidation; they will declare bankruptcy, sell all the properties and move the money elsewhere. So, friends, this is the story of how business is run in Canada, and it is monitored from Firozpur, so that if any big-level raid occurs, they can delete the data, and the Canadian authorities will not get any sales or purchase records of the past years. Look at the minds of these people, how far they think. But now, many cases have been filed against the husband, Ravi Aulakh, and many cases are ongoing—assault cases and others—the list is with us, but why should we spoil anyone's name; people already know. Similarly, many cases against this madam, Mangat, have also been revealed. If anything new comes up, we will share it with you. But friends, see how they do tobacco and cannabis business, even in a foreign country, doing dubious work, which they could legally do because both things can be legally sold. Thousands of shops legally sell cannabis and cigarettes. But they didn't do that work. The profit margin is very low; the expenses are high. You can’t charge more than the printed price on the packet of cannabis. You can’t buy one-pound packet and make small packets. So this wasn't legal work, but the income is right there. A one-dollar item you sell for five or ten dollars—the profit is there. Thus, they made millions of dollars. We will see what happens next; if there are any developments, we will share them with you. Until then, thank you very much to all of you. Thank you.