Mr Sian hails from the majority-Sikh city of Surrey BC. He is no stranger to the courts, with a record going back to 2007 when he was convicted of careless use of a firearm and obstruction of a peace officer. Between then and 2010, he was regularly stopped by police, often in vehicles with other gangsters.
Evidently he didn't learn that if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas, for in August of 2008 he was seriously injured in a shootout in Surrey that left one Gurpreet Singh Sidhu dead. Mr Sian's injuries were so serious that he received support from the Crime Victim Assistance Program. Who said crime doesn't pay?
In March 2009, police executed a search warrant at the family home in Surrey and found cash and drugs. No charges resulted. However, Mr Sian was well on his way to becoming a major player in the Lower Mainland underworld. He survived targeted shootings and reportedly leads the Brothers Keepers gang — a key proxy for the Sinaloa cartel in Canada, interoperable with other Latin American cartels, Chinese Communist Party chemical suppliers, and working alongside the Kinahans, a notorious Irish crime family now based in Dubai and closely linked to Hezbollah finance networks.
British Columbia's anti-gang Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit wouldn't comment on Sian’s involvement with the Brothers Keepers gang. Spokesthingy Cpl. Sarbjit Singh Sangha (no relation, shurely) said in an e-mail to the Vancouver Sun, "We do not have any active investigation on this person."
No indeed! Mr Sian was arrested in sunny Arizona ("Sunnier than California, you bet!") and indicted in a sweeping US case that underscores British Columbia’s critical role as a global trafficking hub, bringing together Mexican cartels and Chinese precursor suppliers that operate with near impunity in Vancouver, but, since President Trump called attention to cross-border crime, have become the focus of elite American law enforcement.
At one point during the three-year-long investigation by the DEA, Mr Sian allegedly told a confidential source that he worked with "Irish organized crime, specifically, the Kinahan family, Italian organized crime and other Canadian organized cime families." He also boasted about his contacts in drug cartels in Mexico and South America. Hey, isn't that what free trade is all about?!
Sidelight: According to the report in the Vancouver Sun, the international drug kingpin also ran into a spot of trouble a decade ago, when he tried to get his purported bride into the Great No-longer-white North. Canada's Immigration Appeal Board ruled his marriage to Sikhjeet Kaur Gill a sham.
The biggest red flag to adjudicator Tim Crowhurst was that Ms Gill didn't even know Mr Sian had been seriously injured in the 2008 gangland shooting mentioned above, or that he had a criminal record. Wrote the judge, "This background is particularly relevant to this appeal because the applicant was not aware of the appellant’s criminal history, nor the shooting, nor his work experience at the time of marriage. The panel finds that this is very important information that would be expected to be shared by two persons entering into a genuine relationship." Well, duh!
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