Hudson settles out of court with former accountants

Hudson reached an out-of-court settlement with its former auditors over outstanding invoices that arose after the town discovered an apparent surplus turned out to be a $1.7-million deficit accumulated over a decade.

On Monday, town council, albeit with Mayor Ed Prévost and councillor Robert Spencer absent for a third straight monthly public meeting, approved the settlement with Bourassa Boyer Inc.

While each party will pay its own legal fees, the town will handover about $40,000 to its former auditors, a Vaudreuil-Dorion-based firm, to settle a lawsuit launched in 2014.

Councillor Ron Goldenberg said he has grudgingly accepted the settlement because the town faced an uphill and costly legal battle and it was better for Hudson to end the dispute now.

“I thought that I would rather be dead than pay them a cent,” he told residents during question period. “It seems that despite my belief certain things should have been discovered, we’re not able to prove that definitely in court.”

Director general Jean-Pierre Roy said the town, which had considered filing a counterclaim against Bourassa Boyer, could have faced a $150,000 bill to sue, with regards to preparing a financial study which would have been needed to be submitted as evidence. As well, he noted that the previous municipal administration and town council, even if members had the best intentions, could be held be partially responsible for any fiscal irregularities regardless of the audited reports submitted by Bourassa Boyer.

“They were asking for $111,000 and we will give them $40,000. This is a financial agreement. We are not blaming them and they are not blaming us,” Roy said.

Roy noted this marked the third attempt by the town to settle with Bourassa Boyer.

In 2014, Bourassa Boyer Inc. had initially launched a $75,000 claim (plus interest) against Hudson related to some outstanding invoices, which town officials had stated then went unpaid since the firm failed to fulfil its professional mandate. According to court documents, about $28,000 of this claim was related to a 2012 invoice and another $47,000 were from two invoices sent in 2013 for accounting and financial duties.

In 2014, the town’s new auditors, Goudreau Poirier Inc., reported that over a 10-year period, from 2003 to 2013, Hudson was dealing with a $1.7-million accumulated deficit instead of a surplus as initially indicated by a previous fiscal report.

Goudreau Poirier Inc. noted in Hudson’s audited financial report for 2014, tabled by town council last month, that it found “serious deficiencies in the internal control” at town hall, which town officials pointed out referred to 2013 and prior years and is related to the $1 million fraud case of Louise Léger-Villandré, the municipality’s former director general.

Léger-Villandré, who worked for the municipality for about four decades, was handed a 30-month prison term on Feb. 22 after she pleaded guilty to six of 19 criminal charges she faced, including charges involving about $1 million that went missing from town hall coffers between 1996 and 2013.