Article content continued

In a series of email responses to questions from Postmedia, Wang insisted he has no idea why police associated him with Paul Jin and placed him under surveillance. Wang provided Postmedia a copy of a legal application filed by the RCMP to extend an order to hold items seized from Wang’s Pathfinder, and said the RCMP won’t respond to his questions about why the vehicle was searched.

“I am doing moving and delivering — part time job — when the polices (sic) took my vehicle unlawfully. They took some drums from the vehicle,” Wang said. “I don’t know what is NPP. I just realized, but I don’t know where the NPP come from. I am just a mover. I don’t know about Paul King Jin. I think the police got wrong one.”

The question asked of Wang — where did the NPP come from — is an important one, as Metro Vancouver is plagued with a crisis of fentanyl overdose deaths.

In a 2017 study titled “China’s Deadly Export to the U.S.,” a United States security commission reported that because fentanyl is not widely used in China, state authorities “place little emphasis on controlling its production and export.”

The fentanyl precursor NPP is also not controlled by China, according to the report. And U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents report that fentanyl precursors including NPP are mailed from China for use in clandestine labs in Canada.

In January 2017, according to legal filings, police learned that within a six-week period Wang had acquired 18 restricted firearms from West Coast Hunting Supplies in Richmond. Corporate records show that Hai Peng Yang is the gun shop’s director. The shop is involved in firearms training courses and “wildlife specimen” exports, according to its website. Yang and shop employees didn’t respond to a request for comment on the civil claim allegations regarding Ge Wang’s restricted gun purchases from West Coast Hunting.