RCMP Raid on Premier Glen Clark's Home

On March 2, 1999, as night was falling on this quiet East Vancouver street, four undercover police officers were preparing to raid the home of then-B.C. Premier Glen Clark. A search warrant alleged a breach of trust related to a controversial casino license the province had approved in principle.

This raid followed a period where the government and the City of Burnaby had been battling over a proposed 20-table, 300-slot machine casino at a Burnaby hotel. The owner of the North Burnaby Inn, Steve Ng, had partnered with Dimitrios Pilarinos, a friend of Clark's who had done renovations on the Premier's home, to apply for a casino charity license. The city opposed the application and said it wouldn't approve rezoning. The proposal itself only reached 46 percent under the government’s evaluation rubric for casinos, which was lower than other licenses at the time. Despite these issues, the government announced approval in principle for Ng and Pilarinos’ proposal on December 17, 1998.

A reporter named John Daly had received a tip that a Revenue Canada employee, Dimitri Vrahnos, had filed a complaint with the Burnaby RCMP and the then-opposition B.C. Liberal Party. The complaint suggested there might be "funny business" with the casino license, involving a group of people, at least one of whom knew the Premier, and that they had an inside track. Vrahnos made this complaint after Pilarinos, who was a friend of his in Vancouver's Greek community, asked for help with paperwork for the application.

On the day of the raid, Daly had initially been working on memorials for Jack Webster, a prominent journalist who had passed away. Later that afternoon, his assignment editor mentioned that police were raiding the North Burnaby Inn. Daly realized this could be connected to the tip he had received. He went to the Inn and found police arresting people and searching the premises, related to allegations of illegal gambling operated by Pilarinos.

Daly and his cameraman then came here, waiting for two hours in a van, eating pizza, wondering if the "four guys in suits" in a nearby car would run into the Premier's house or drive away. After those two hours, those four men got out of their car and headed up the steps to the Clark home. In the three and a half years after this night, Clark would resign, see his party decimated, be criminally charged, and eventually acquitted.