The house, a longtime meeting place for the notorious biker gang, sits on a corner lot and is assessed at $1,586,000
A bit of Vancouver underworld history is up for sale.
The B.C. government announced Monday that it is putting the former East End Hells Angels clubhouse on the market — two years after it was seized under civil forfeiture laws.
As of late Monday afternoon, there was no online real estate listing for the stucco-and-brick house at 3598 East Georgia St., which is assessed at $1,586,000.
The house, the longtime meeting place for the notorious biker gang, sits on a corner lot that is 10 metres (33 feet) by 33 metres (109 feet) long.
It was seized by the government, along with two others in Nanaimo and Kelowna, after a 16-year court battle over whether the clubhouses had been used to commit crimes. The province finally won in 2023.
Public Safety Minister Garry Begg said in a statement Monday that the seizures were “a major victory for public safety and a severe blow against organized crime.”
“Today, the government has listed the former Hells Angels’ Vancouver clubhouse for sale, marking the first of these clubhouses to be made available for commercial sale and a further step in undercutting organized crime in British Columbia,” Begg said.
“As criminals find new ways to try to hide their ill-gotten gains obtained through violence, intimidation and criminal activity, we are finding targeted ways to permanently take away their assets, while protecting British Columbians.”
He said the sale “when completed, will include a right of entry, a legal tool authorizing the Civil Forfeiture Office to take the property back if it is ever acquired and used by organized crime in the future.”
Begg thanked Civil Forfeiture Office staff “for their continued work on what has been a lengthy process, as well as the law enforcement agencies of B.C. that supported government’s actions.”
“This listing is a testament to the hard work of everyone involved, and a prime example of how the work we are doing is steering illegally acquired assets back to communities and the people of British Columbia,” he said.
The long-running court battle began when the director of civil forfeiture seized the former Nanaimo clubhouse at 805 Victoria Rd. in November 2007 alleging the building had been used for illegal activity.
In 2012, the clubhouses in east Vancouver and in Kelowna were added to the case.
The land titles of the three properties, assessed together at just over $3 million, were transferred to the government on March 17, 2023, after B.C.’s Court of Appeal overturned a B.C. Supreme Court ruling that had sided with the Hells Angels and had returned the clubhouses to the bikers in June 2020.
In that ruling, Justice Barry Davies said the government agency had failed to prove the Hells Angels was a criminal organization or that the clubhouses “play an important role in enabling and empowering members of the Hells Angels to engage in serious crime for financial gain.”
But on Feb. 15, 2023, B.C. Appeal Court Justices Mary Newbury, Christopher Grauer and Leonard Marchand said the Davies findings were “tainted” because he used an elevated standard of proof and refused to admit facts from previous criminal cases against individual Hells Angels.
“We are satisfied that the inference clearly arises that members’ engagement in unlawful activities was facilitated through access to information gathered surreptitiously at the clubhouses, and protection from surveillance and detection by law enforcement offered by the clubhouses,” the judges said.
“Indeed, the most logical and reasonable inference to be drawn from the evidence is that the clubhouses were designed and outfitted at least in part for that very purpose. We are further satisfied that such use of the clubhouses was likely to continue.”
The Hells Angels asked the Supreme Court of Canada to hear an appeal but the highest court declined to do so in October 2023.