Civil Forfeiture
ICBC, the British Columbia government auto insurance corporation is having its problems these days. It seems that some employees learned how to rig the bidding process in order to buy vehicles that had previously been “written off”.
According to reports there are more than a few managers involved (22+??) and at least some of the autos that were written off and then bought by these managers were not deserving of that label. The inference is that somebody’s Jaguar or Mercedes was damaged and that an ICBC manager would deem the vehicle a “write off” and then buy it in a rigged auction. At the same time ICBC employees were availing themselves of free or cheap paint jobs and other services at the ICBC repair center. ICBC is handled by the Solicitor General’s office, the same people who have responsibility for the RCMP services in British Columbia.
Anybody who has worked as part of a large crew of workers knows full well that if something of that scale is going on then other people know about it too. At this point I’m not sure how long the above misdeeds were going on for but I can’t help but notice that some of the main players in the Solitor General’s office came up through ICBC ranks which makes sense but it raises alarm bells for me.
Especially dangerous is that these same people are now getting into Civil Forfeiture and I’d imagine that the same dangers (or as they might see it, enticements) exist in that there must be disposals of the seized property (auctions rigged) and selective application of the Civil Forfeiture Act (pick which car you like and write it off). At this point they are seizing the vehicles of impaired drivers and the houses of marijuana “grow show” operations. Their “flagship” seizure was that of the Hells Angels clubhouse in Nanaimo.
Additionally, the proceeds from the sale of the seized goods can be used to pay for the costs of seizing the goods so the police have additional reason to use the Civil Forfeiture Act in zealous, and probably overzealous fashion.
