While Justice Denise Bellamy found there was enoughcredible evidence to conclude that former
The $19.2-million inquiry, which lasted over
three years, was called to discover why computer leases signed by the city with
MFP Financial Services, which were supposed to be worth $43 million, ended up
costing almost double that amount.
After Bellamy released her four-volume,
1,123-page report last week, she stressed in a statement that she had no power
to find people guilty of criminal acts or liable for civil damages.
However, Toronto Mayor David Miller says he
will request that city council ask the OPP for a criminal investigation into
the MFP scandal, stating the report "has laid bare damning evidence of how the
system allowed rot and corruption to flourish at City Hall."
In a statement, Miller said, "The story told in
this report amounts to a conspiracy to defraud the city by placing private gain
above public service."
But finding any of the major players in the
scandal guilty in criminal court will not be easy for investigators or the
prosecution, says one criminology professor.
Kent Roach, a law professor at the University
of Toronto who is currently serving on advisory committees for both the Arar
inquiry and the Ipperwash inquiry into the killing of Dudley George, says the
burden of proof and standards of evidence are much higher in a criminal trial
than at a public inquiry.
"To introduce evidence in any criminal trial,
the prosecution will have to demonstrate that it was obtained independently of
any compelled testimony. So it really depends on what the compelled evidence
and compelled testimony was at the inquiry," he says.
"That will have to be a decision that the
police and the prosecutors eventually make, whether there is sufficient
independently obtained evidence to warrant a reasonable prospect of conviction
of any of the individuals that may be involved."
Roach says an open-ended public inquiry can
often complicate subsequent criminal charges.
"This is something we saw in Walkerton and we
saw in Westray, that holding a public inquiry and compelling testimony [that]
was part of the public inquiry process certainly complicates subsequent
criminal prosecutions.
"It doesn't make anyone immune from criminal
prosecutions but it does put a high burden on the Crown to show this is
evidence that would have been available regardless of what was compelled at the
public inquiry," Roach says.
"It's clear in terms of going forward with a
criminal charge that there has to be a reasonable prospect of conviction, and
obviously in making that judgment the prosecutors will have to look at whether
the evidence is independently obtained."
Whether the information and evidence found at
this inquiry will help find liability in a civil suit remains to be seen, but a
suit going to court next month may make this clear.
Back in 2002, when city council voted to stop
lease payments after shady details of the deal surfaced, MFP, now Clearlink
Capital Corp., launched a civil suit against the city claiming it was owed $14
million in lease payments.
The city then launched a $10-million
countersuit, alleging that MFP was guilty of negligent misrepresentation,
breach of contract, and breach of fiduciary duty. The city alleged at the
inquiry that MFP had used a deliberate bait-and-switch strategy, but Bellamy's
report casts doubt on that assertion.
"The city's bait-and-switch allegation casts
too wide a net over MFP," Bellamy wrote. "Though Dash Domi may have been
capable of other deceptions, he did not have the business sophistication to
pull off the sustained and complicated deception necessary for a bait and
switch. While MFP certainly has much to answer for in the aftermath of the
computer
Clearlink CEO Fraser Berrill says the findings
in Bellamy's report will help the company's civil suit.
"We are confident that the city's theory of
liability on the part of MFP is largely debunked by the evidence and the
characterization of events. We look forward to further confirmation of this at
trial," Berrill said in a statement.
