Surrey, B.C., businessman says shootings connected to ongoing extortion

CBC

6 days ago

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A Surrey, B.C., man says two recent shootings at his businesses are connected to ongoing extortion attempts targeting the South Asian community.
Satish Kumar, the president of the city's Lakshmi Narayan Mandir temple, said he received video voicemails on May 28 from numbers listed as being from Italy and New Zealand that demanded $2 million.
He said he refused to pay and reported it to police at the time, but officials took no action.
In the early hours of June 7, shots were fired at the banquet hall he owns, he said.
Shots were fired, he said, at another business he's connected to, Hub Insurance, on Tuesday.
No one was injured in the shootings at the businesses.
He said he's holding a public forum on Sunday, and announcing a $100,000 reward to encourage the community to help bring an end to the extortion and violence.
"I'm requesting the community [to] come forward," he said. "Don't be scared of these guys, right? They don't want to kill you. They want only money from you guys."
Kumar said that if community members come together, they can help find the shooters who live in Metro Vancouver as well as the extortionists.
Staff Sgt. Lindsey Houghton, a spokesperson for the Surrey Police Service, said investigators hadn't yet connected the shootings to extortion.
"I would urge caution .... police can't jump to conclusions and immediately go from A to Z and make a connection," he told CBC News. "The evidence has to guide us in every case that we investigate."
An ongoing spate of extortion attempts targeting South Asian business owners led the RCMP to form a national task force to deal with the issue, which has also been reported in Alberta and the Greater Toronto Area.
Kumar said his son's Surrey home was the target of a December 2023 shooting, and he's received no updates from police on the case.
Houghton said it was far too early for police to connect that shooting and the two that occurred over the last week.
"We can't immediately connect an incident that happened over the weekend with something that happened two years ago," he said.
Kumar said he's received support from local leaders, like Surrey Newton MP Sukh Dhaliwal and Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke, and he's asking police to attend his forum on Sunday to provide answers on how business owners are being protected.
Attorney general encourages reporting
Steve Kooner, a B.C. Conservative MLA and Opposition critic for the attorney general's office, said the members of the South Asian community are fearful for their lives amid the spate of extortion attempts.
He said the province has failed to respond after MLAs attended another community forum on the issue last year, and a lack of trust in authorities is holding people back from going public with their fears.
"There needs to be an open line of communication, and that's done through trust-building, and the government could take an active role in that," he said.
WATCH | Forum held over extortion attempts:
Forum held over extortion concerns in Metro Vancouver
11 months ago
Duration 2:46
Two owners of transport companies in B.C. are speaking out about rising safety concerns after they say they were targeted for extortion. On Saturday, a public forum was held in Surrey to highlight the alarming situation, which has had some in the community on edge for more than a year. As Sohrab Sandhu reports, the trucking industry says laws need to be changed to provide better protection against extortion.
Kooner further called on the province to set up a multilingual anonymous hotline to encourage community members to report any extortion attempts.
In response, B.C. Attorney General Niki Sharma told CBC News that residents can already call local police and stay anonymous, and she wants to encourage people to use low-barrier ways to report extortion attempts.
Sharma said authorities need as many people as possible to come forward, and while she understood public frustration over the lack of updates on cases, there are teams of people working on the issue.
"I'm a part of the South Asian community in B.C., and their issues are taken just as seriously," she said.
"And I know this is a complicated matter, given the cross-jurisdictional nature and the way it's showing up, but we have the resources in place and we need to keep at it."