A Canadian man has concluded a 16-year legal effort to reclaim over C$1.2 million (£651,000) in cash that was seized from his home. The money was discovered during a police search in 2009, which was conducted due to suspicions of an illegal firearm and drug possession at Marcel Breton’s residence in north-western Ontario.
Breton was initially convicted of multiple offenses but was acquitted in a retrial, where he argued that the search of his property was conducted unlawfully. Recently, an Ontario appeals court upheld a 2023 ruling directing that the majority of the seized money should be allocated to the Canadian government, effectively ending Breton’s prospects for recovering the funds.
During the trial, the judge determined that Breton did not have lawful possession of the money located on his property. Police found C$1,235,620 buried under his garage and an additional C$32,000 in other areas of the garage, as well as C$15,000 in bundles hidden within the living room’s under-floor heating ducts. The judge remarked on the unusual nature of having such significant amounts of cash buried and noted that the predominant denomination was C$20, which an expert indicated is often linked to the drug trade. It was also highlighted that Breton had not reported any income to the revenue agency from 2001 to 2008.
However, the appeals court also decided that the C$15,000 found in the vents of Breton’s home should be returned to him, as it could not be definitively established that this amount was obtained unlawfully, given that it was not bundled in the same manner as the cash found in the garage.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20kl7x3ylyo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss