Louis Pasquin is appealing the conviction that has given him the dubious honour of being the first lawyer in Canada found guilty of gangsterism.
By Mike King GANGSTARAP W 32 JULY 2009 www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com
hen Quebec provincial police launched Operation Piranha in February 2004 to investigate a drug-smuggling ring with links to traditional organized crime and
the Mafia, they likely weren't expecting to put the bite on a Montreal lawyer. But found in their net after about 150 Sûreté du Québec officers carried out a mid-March 2006 raid was Louis D. Pasquin, no stranger to drug dealers or major police probes as a well-known defend- er of bikers and mobsters from the Hells Angels to the Montreal Mafia's notorious Cotroni clan.. A member of the Barreau du Québec since 1987, he
was charged with committing a crime for the benefit of a criminal organization (better known as gangster- ism), conspiring to traffic cocaine, and two counts of drug trafficking. Nine months after the end of the
DAVID BOILY/LA PRESSE
