Former CEO Lino Matteo to be out on appeal
Lino Matteo is expected to be a free man once again despite having recently been sentenced to his second prison term in less than 18 months in two different cases where he was convicted of defrauding hundreds of investors out of millions of dollars.
On Wednesday, Superior Court Justice Guy Cournoyer agreed with a request, from Matteo’s lawyer George Calaritis, that he be released on bail while Matteo appeals his conviction in a case where a Quebec Court judge found him guilty of having violated 270 counts of Quebec’s Securities Act.
Cournoyer was informed that the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) did not object to Matteo’s release after he agreed to follow a series of conditions.
A third party agreed to post a $25,000 bond as part of the conditions.
Matteo is required to reside in Quebec and is not allowed to make any transactions in securities while out on bail. Cournoyer also ordered that Matteo be present on Feb. 20 when the judge is expected to deliver his decision on the AMF’s request to dismiss Matteo’s appeal.
Investors lost more than $130 million when his company went bankrupt in 2006. Some lost their life savings.
On Nov. 27, Quebec Court Judge Hélène Morin sentenced Matteo to the maximum sentence allowable in such a case, a five-year prison term, and said, “to this day, (Matteo) has shown no insight or sense of accountability.”
The decision to grant Matteo bail on Wednesday came exactly a year to the day after another Superior Court judge agreed to let Matteo out of a penitentiary in a different case where he is appealing his conviction, on June 2, 2016, in the longest jury trial ever held in Canada.
In that case, Matteo was sentenced to eight years, after he was convicted of fraud, four counts of forgery and four counts of uttering forged documents.
Matteo and two other men defrauded investors in Cinar Corp. out of more than $120 million by funnelling cash into offshore Bahamian accounts.