Police say members of Ontario’s Serious Fraud Office launched a “lengthy” investigation and found evidence of fraud through the offering or receipt of secret commissions when the project was awarded in 2015.
Ontario Provincial Police have charged two men in connection to an investigation into a $300 million procurement project at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
John Aquino, 50, is charged with two counts of fraud over $5,000 and one charge related to the offering or receipt of secret commissions. Vasos Georgiou, 50, faces the same charges in addition to one count of fraud on government. Subsequently, IO formed a special committee to investigate the matter, with help from Bay Street law firm Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP and forensic auditor Cohen Hamilton Steger & Co. Inc.
In regard to Georgiou’s conflict of interest, the IO report says he “had done work for property management companies in which John Aquino had an ownership interest,” had a minority interest and investment in a company that Aquino also had a minority interest, and that he’d stated he also provided unremunerated services to that same company, identified as OTEC Research Limited.
“The Special Committee has concluded that no such pattern of bias in favour of St. Michael’s Partnership/Bondfield was evident in the Procurement process.” The Star reached out to the lawyer representing Aquino as well as the SFO but did not receive a response by publication time.
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