Balraj Singh “Roger” Bhatti, 63, was indicted in 2020 and charged with colluding with foreign nationals to make fraudulent claims for refugee protection in Canada. He was suspended from the Law Society of British Columbia at the time. In announcing the charges, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) said Bhatti, based in Delta, BC, collaborated with an interpreter, Sofiane Dahak, in offenses involving people from Central Europe that took place between 2002 and 2014. The CBSA began investigating Bhatti in 2012. Bhatti began practicing law in 1983 and expanded into immigration law in the 1990s. The Canada Border Services Agency launched an investigation into Roger Bhatti’s immigration law practice in 2012. (CBC) In his sentencing reasons, recently posted online, BC Provincial Court Judge Mark Jetté wrote that at the time of the offenses Bhatti was one of the busiest lawyers in the Lower Mainland representing clients seeking refugee status in the contract. The court found that Bhatti falsified notes in the name of his family doctor and others saying clients were unwell in an attempt to delay or postpone hearings with the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB). The notes often said a client had a heart attack, hearing loss or had kidney stones. The doctors whose letterhead was used for the documents testified in court that they had not prepared them. The court said Bhatti “submitted Hungarian police reports and/or medical records he knew to be false, with the intent of inducing the IRB to make a finding in favor of his clients.” Bhatti’s lawyers, including former BC attorney general Wally Oppal, asked for a suspended sentence for their client, who had no prior criminal convictions. The suspended sentence was refused by Jetté because of the “seriousness of these offences”, he wrote. “The fact that Mr. Bhatti was acting in his capacity as a lawyer, the impact that Mr. Bhatti’s conduct had on the integrity of the refugee conference system in this country, and Mr. Bhatti’s high degree of moral decency warrant a sentence of institutional prison”.
community ties
The sentencing grounds include sections describing the workload Bhatti was under while representing so many clients. His lawyers provided several letters to the court, including one from former MLA Moe Sihota, who is married to Bhatti’s wife’s sister, describing the toll taken by Bhatti’s workload and commitment to his health clients of. A clinical and forensic psychologist also provided evidence that Bhatti was severely depressed at the time of the offences, which was exacerbated by his work habits. “It was apparent that Mr. Bhatti’s busy practice and work habits were taking a toll both physically and emotionally,” Jetté wrote. The reasons also weigh how a prison sentence could further undermine Bhatti’s health and his responsibilities to his family and community.
Reputation “damaged beyond repair”
Bhatti’s father, Kesar, was president of the Khalsa Diwan Society and was instrumental in building the Sikh temple on Ross Street in Vancouver. His wife, Debbie Parhar, was a special assistant in Mike Harcourt’s office when he was premier of BC. She later became the accountant of Bhatti’s office. “He is part of a tight-knit Indo-Canadian community; his reputation in that community has been damaged, probably irreparably,” Jetté wrote. “His wife has suffered and will continue to suffer from his actions.” Jetté also considered aggravating factors at sentencing, writing that the creation of false medical and police reports “was a complex and premeditated course of conduct that continued over a period of years and affected multiple claims.”
Interpretive proposal
In mid-June 2021, Dahak pleaded guilty and received a suspended sentence of two years less a day with conditions that included house arrest for the first eight months, a curfew for the next eight months and 100 hours of community work. He was also fined $14,000. The CBSA said in 2020 that most of the claimants from Bhatti and Dahak’s offenses were found not to be refugees and removed from Canada.
