ROBERT LLOYD SHELLENBERG

Everyone is on drugs!  Trudeau is "outraged" because a Canadian citizen, CFO of China's largest cell phone company, has been sentenced to death in China for smuggling 200 kilos of methamphetamine. 

Previous to this conviction, Shellenberg had been convicted 11 times for drug and impaired-driving offences between 2003-2012 and served two jail terms. In 2010 he was sentenced to one year in prison and two years' probation for three counts of drug possession "for the purpose of trafficking."  In 2012 he was convicted of four more drugs-related offences and served 16 months in jail.

Shellenberg came to China as a tourist and met Kem who found Xu who was to act as a translator and rent a warehouse in Dalian, a port city on the Liaodong Peninsula a thousand miles up the eastern China coast from Guangdong Province where the drugs were purchased.  November 19, 2014 Schellenberg met Xu in Dalian.  The two men stuffed tires with 500 pounds of methamphetamine which was to be smuggled into Australia.

A disagreement caused Schellenberg to look for a different warehouse and Xu went to the police. 

Schellenberg flew out of the Dalian airport for Thailand. 

He was arrested at a stopover in Guangdong.  Two accomplices were caught, tried and convicted.  One received a life sentence and the other received the death penalty suspended.  Schellenberg was given 15 years.  In his appeal it was found that he had been a ringleader and was given the death penalty.  The facts showed that Stephen, Kem and Xu had participated in a methamphetamine trafficking case in 2014.

China's Criminal Law states people who smuggle, sell, transport, produce drugs in China will face a sentence of up to death if they participate in organized international drug smuggling activities or the amount of methamphetamine is over 50 grams.  When Schellenberg was sentenced, Trudeau condemned China for arbitrarily punishing Schellenberg.  According to Trudeau, the conviction had little to do with the actual crime, and was merely retaliation against the West for arresting a high profile corporate executive for using international banks to interfere with sanctions against Iran.  500 pounds of meth?  Transnational smuggling?  Arbitrary?  Maybe Trudeau needs to cut back on his drugs.