One of the Okanagan Valleysa国际传媒 most prolific violent offenders is also a deadbeat dad.
An arrest warrant was issued by Justice Lynette Jung after a hearing was held Friday morning at the Penticton Courthouse, where a lawyer representing the provincesa国际传媒 Family Maintenance Enforcement Agency presented the case against Afshin Maleki Ighani, who once again failed to appear for a scheduled court appearance.
Lawyer John Peterson told the court that Ighani was first ordered to pay spousal and child support more than 8,000 days ago, nearly 20 years ago.
Over the past 20 years, Ighani has rarely paid the spousal and child support he was ordered to pay, which now totals almost $270,000, said Peterson. He also owes nearly $77,000 in interest on these missed payments.
The court hearing on Friday related to a court order made by a Penticton judge back in 2012, where Ighani was ordered to pay $50 per month. The total amount he owes from this order is just over $7,200, said Peterson.
Ighani has defaulted on those payments 15 times, and civil law in this province calls for a five-day jail sentence for each default. This means Ighani is facing an automatic jail sentence of 75 days when hesa国际传媒 arrested on this warrant, said Jung.
Ighani has not only repeatedly missed court dates related to his spousal and child support hearings over the past 20 years but also refuses to file income tax returns, said Peterson.
Ighani hasn鈥檛 paid a single cent in spousal or child support in 14 of the last 20 years, Peterson said.
Back in 2011, he made a single payment of $2.29. The only substantial payment he made was in 2012, when he paid nearly $14,000 after receiving money from an ICBC claim, Peterson said.
Ighani has steadfastly refused to respond to financial disclosure requests demanded by the courts or to file proper income tax returns, Peterson said.
Ighani also holds a belief system that he will not adhere to orders to pay support for women or children, he added.
The fact that Ighani refuses to show up in court when ordered to do so regarding these civil court matters related to his ex-wife and children is troubling, Peterson said.
鈥淎nd here we are again, 24 years in,鈥 he said.
Jung ruled that Ighani has made it very clear he doesn鈥檛 respect the court or the judgesa国际传媒 orders and continually fails to appear in court when ordered to do so regarding the payments owed to his ex-wife and children.
鈥淧eterson has convinced me鈥 that Ighani has no intention of paying the money he owes and that the 15 defaults in this case should result in a warrant for his arrest, said Jung.
If Ighani were somehow able to come up with the $7,300 he owes in relation to the case before the court on Friday, she would cancel the warrant, she said.
Last February, four years after beating a kidnapping charge and completing a sentence for assaulting two people at the Okanagan Correctional Centre, one of the regionsa国际传媒 most notorious criminals was back behind bars at the scene of those latter crimes.
Ighani, 53, appeared in a Penticton courtroom via videoconference from the OCC, where he was being held on two charges: resisting arrest and driving while prohibited, both on Nov. 30, 2023, in Okanagan Falls.
These new charges are the first against Ighani since 2018. His last string of charges concluded in January 2020, when he was sentenced under a plea bargain to 21 months鈥 time served on counts of assault with a weapon and assaulting a peace officer.
The charges arose from separate incidents in 2017 and 2018 while Ighani was locked up at the Okanagan Correctional Centre in Oliver.
The matter that put Ighani in the OCC at the time of both attacks was an alleged drug-related kidnapping.
However, Ighani was acquitted of those charges in January 2020 after a judge found numerous frailties in the Crownsa国际传媒 case. The case fell apart when one of the alleged victims fled to the U.S. before trial and the other claimed no memory of the events.
Even then, Ighani was no stranger to the courts, having been sentenced in 2007 to 42 months in prison for his connection to an Oliver drug ring.
The native of Iran was ordered deported after that conviction, but his departure was stayed because he faced the death penalty in his home country, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.
