About 2,500 Quebecers are challenging impaired driving charges, a situation that is becoming “less and less manageable,” according to the Quebec Attorney General.
Accounting
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News roundup – Alcoa charged, accountant sues tax man, & slow justice
Following an investigation by Transport Canada, the world’s leading producer of aluminum has been charged with two counts of failing to ensure the health and safety of a man who died in an accident at the Alcoa smelter in Baie Comeau, Quebec, some 400 km northeast of Quebec City.
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News roundup – Kirpans, Norbourg & pay equity complaints
Quebec’s National Assembly raises controversy after barring Sikhs for carrying kirpans, prompting questions surrounding reasonable accommodation of religious minorities.
Court of Quebec rules that order to stop 2007 demonstration during a North American leader’s summit in Montebello contravened the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Victims of the multi-million-dollar Norbourg financial scandal have new hope they may recover all their money.
Quebec workers eligible for pay equity urged to file complaints before May 30, 2011. Employees who file a claim before the May deadline, and who win their cases, will be eligible to receive full retroactive payments from their employers, including interest and additional penalties. Workers who file after the deadline will only be eligible to receive retroactive payments for the previous five years.
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Do jail sentences deter future white-collar crimes?
The courts appear to have heard calls from victims of white-collar crime demanding stiffer sentences against those found guilty of swindling investors.
In October 2009, Vincent Lacroix, a high-profile Quebec white-collar criminal found guilty of masterminding a $130-million fraud with 9,200 victims, was sentenced to 13 years in jail. A little over a year later, in February 2010, former Montreal financial adviser Earl Jones was sentenced to 11 years in prison, after pleading guilty to two fraud charges related to a $50-million Ponzi scheme he orchestrated.
But an accounting professor who published a study on occupational fraud is far from convinced that stiff jail sentences on white-collar criminals will prove to be an effective deterrent.
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Four more found guilty in Mount Real investment scandal
The other financial scandal that struck Quebec, the one that did not receive nearly the same attention that the defunct mutual fund company headed by Vincent Norbourg did, is winding its way through the courts.
Three more individuals linked with the bankrupt Montreal financial group Mount Real Corp. were recently condemned to pay fines ranging $13,000 to $425,000 while a fourth pled guilty to 40 counts, making it 18 individuals who have so far pled guilty to 478 counts, with fines totalling $2.2 million. (more…)
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Shareholder advocacy group wins battle against one of Canada’s powerful giants
A Quebec shareholder advocacy group won yet another legal battle against one of Canada’s most powerful giants after it swayed the Quebec Court of Appeal that shareholders should have the right to ask to examine the financial statements of the corporation’s subsidiaries.
In a precedent-setting ruling, the appeal court held that section 157 of the Canada Business Corporations Act (Act) legally allows corporations to consolidate their financial statements, as recommended by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants’ Handbook, as well as permits “curious and sophisticated” shareholders to have free access to the financial statements of a corporation’s operating segments.
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Quebec Court of Appeal holds accounting firm liable
An accounting firm that misstated audited financial statements and then concealed the blunder was ordered by the Quebec Court of Appeal to pay more than $300,000 to a shareholder who relied on the statements to acquire a company.
Mallette S.E.N.C.R.L., the sixth largest accounting firm in the province with more than 50 partners and 550 professionals working across 21 offices located in small and mid-sized cities, was held liable for breach of a legal duty after the court found that it was accountable for the loss of future gains the shareholder could have earned. Also held liable were two of the firm’s partners – Gratien Nolet, formerly of Arthur Andersen, who performed the audit from 1999 to 2003, and Marc Dagenais, a tax expert.
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Scrambling to convert to IFRS
When the Canadian Securities Administrators issued a staff notice during the summer that all registrants regulated directly by Canadian securities regulatory authorities would be required to prepare financial statements using International Financial Accounting Standards beginning on January 1, 2011, it literally set off a scramble.
Registrants such as investment counsel and portfolio managers, limited market dealers, exchange-contracts dealers, restricted dealers (and in Quebec, mutual fund dealers), who are not members of a self-regulatory organization (SRO) like the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada and the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada, suddenly were faced with a significant undertaking that could materially affect their reported financial position and results of operations.
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Former politician loses right to practice accounting
A former Quebec politician who served a six-month sentence after being found guilty of five counts of fraud and three counts of breach of trust by a public official recently lost a legal battle against the disciplinary committee of the Quebec Order of Chartered Accountants who had revoked his license for life.
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Vincent Lacroix criminal trial about to begin
More than 1,500 people will be parading through the corridors of the Palais de Justice in Montreal over the next three days, summoned as potential candidates in the long-awaited criminal proceedings against Vincent Lacroix, the founder of defunct mutual fund company Norbourg Asset Management Inc., who was sentenced to 12 years in a 2007 civil trial after being found guilty of 51 Quebec Securities Act violations for having defrauded 9,200 investors of $115-million between 2000 and 2005.
The 42-year old Quebecer, whose sentence was subsequently reduced to eight-and-a-half years and then to five years less a day last month by the Quebec Court of Appeal, faces nearly 200 criminal charges of fraud, conspiracy to defraud, conspiracy to commit forgery, fabricating documents and money laundering laid by the RCMP following their investigation into Norbourg. (more…)
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Canada’s longest trial again in the news — Chapter III
“The petitioners are the defendants in the longest running judicial saga in Quebec legal history. A trial that had occupied no less than eight years was aborted because of the trial judge’s illness and his inability to resume its conduct. At that stage, the plaintiffs’ evidence was complete and the petitioners had completed roughly one-half of their evidence.”
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Agreements provide unfair advantage over Canada’s tax treaty partners
In negotiations with a number of countries that have earned a well-deserved reputation for being tax havens, Canada is on the verge of signing its first bilateral tax information exchange agreement (TIEA) with Bermuda, granting the islands a significant tax benefit that would give it an unfair advantage over Canada’s tax treaty partners, according to tax experts.
“The Canadian government has long complained about Canadians using tax havens,” noted Lorne Saltman, a tax lawyer with the law firm Cassels Brock in Toronto. “This seems to encourage it – a rather perverse tax policy.” (more…)
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Quebec inches its way towards doctrine of rectification
Cookie maker par excellence, Monsieur Félix & Mr. Norton, heaved a sigh of relief when Quebec Superior Court annulled a resolution adopted nearly three years ago by the its Board of Directors to dole out dividends totaling $950,000 in a ruling that inches Quebec civil law towards the acceptance of the doctrine of rectification. (more…)
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Canada’s longest trial again in the news
Nearly 15 months after the Quebec Court of Appeal griped about the legal war of attrition that has lasted more than a decade in the case against a former accounting giant and its partners over the infamous collapse of Montreal real-estate firm Castor Holdings Inc., the highest court of the province recently dismissed yet another appeal.
Categories: Accounting, Quebec, Quebec Court of Appeal, Quebec Superior Court, Rulings, White-collar crimes