Bayani has been sentenced in absentia by an Ontario Superior Court judge to seven years for his role in trafficking the date rape drug GHB along with members of the Hells Angels.
Bayani, 36, was reported missing to West Vancouver police in September, two days before his sentencing was scheduled to go ahead.
West Vancouver police Det. Tom Wolff von Gudenberg said at the time that Bayani, who is linked to the United Nations gang, was on his way to the gym when he vanished, leaving his family extremely worried.
Bayani’s first sentencing hearing was adjourned because of his disappearance, which his lawyer attributed to possible “foul play.” At a second sentencing hearing, Judge Robert Clark issued a warrant for Bayani’s arrest, noting the lawyer “had no further intelligence concerning the whereabouts of his client.”
Both Bayani and Haney Hells Angel co-accused Vincenzo (Jimmy) Sansalone were convicted of conspiring to traffic GHB in July 2011 in connection with the largest seizure ever of the “date rape” drug in Canadian history.
The investigation dates back to the fall of 2005 when Bayani sold 600 litres of GHB to Mehrdad Bahman, a prospect with the Toronto chapter of the Hells Angels. Bayani was not paid at the time. A police agent later told authorities that Bahman had a large quantity of GHB stored in a garage in Toronto, which police seized in a raid in February 2006.
“To maintain the integrity of their ongoing investigation, the officers made it appear as though the garage had been burgled. As a result of the seizure, Bahman was unable to pay Bayani and a dispute arose in connection with the outstanding debt; that dispute lasted many months,” Clark noted in his reasons for sentencing, a copy of which was obtained by The Vancouver Sun.
In June 2006, at the direction of a vice-president of the Toronto Hells Angels, the agent came to Vancouver with Bahman and Zavisa Drecic, a full-patch member of the Woodbridge, Ont., chapter to mediate the dispute with Bayani.
Sansalone met them at the airport and took them to the Haney clubhouse. The next day, Drecic and the agent met Bayani at a restaurant in downtown Vancouver and hammered out a repayment plan for the GHB debt.
Sansalone was sentenced to six years for his part in the conspiracy.
Bayani, 36, was a major player who deserved a stiffer sentence because “there was an undercurrent of violence in the aftermath of the drug transaction,” Clark said.
He said the nature of the drug itself was an aggravating feature that had to be taken into account.
“This drug is particularly pernicious. Albeit it has uses other than as a ‘date rape’ vehicle, it is meant, for the most part, to be given to innocent, unsuspecting third parties, mainly women, so as to render them unable to effectively resist men who seek to take sexual advantage of them,” Clark said.
“It is one thing for a person to sell a willing buyer an illegal drug when the buyer knows what he is buying and the risks associated with taking it. It is quite another to sell someone a drug that the vendor knows is going to be administered to an unsuspecting third party.”
He noted that Bahman had already sold 250 litres of GHB by the time the police seized the rest.
“As I understand it, put into someone’s drink, only a few drops of this liquid are sufficient to accomplish the evil it is meant to facilitate. Thus, even considering the lesser amount that appears to have made it to the street, as it were, the potential for serious mischief was enormous,” Clark said.
The judge said Bayani’s failure to show up at sentencing in Toronto was also an aggravating factor despite the lawyer’s assertion something untoward may have happened.
“The totality of the information proffered to this court … to explain Bayani’s failure to attend court does not, with the greatest respect, raise the proposition that he has been the victim of foul play beyond the realm of conjecture. Absent proof of that, I am left to conclude, and do conclude, that the accused has simply absconded.”
