CINAR’S WEINBERG
Loses appeal in fraud case
Ronald Weinberg, the man who co-founded what was once Canada’s largest animation production company, has lost his appeal of the case in which he and two other men were convicted of having defrauded investors in his firm.
The decision made by the Quebec Court of Appeal on Tuesday means that the two other men convicted in the same lengthy trial — John Xanthoudakis, 61, and Lino Matteo, 58 — will have to report to a federal penitentiary in Ste-annedes-plaines by Wednesday. While Weinberg, 68, was appealing the jury’s verdict and his sentence, he began serving his nine-year prison term in 2016 and was granted full parole last year.
Xanthoudakis and Matteo began serving the eight-year sentences they each received in the case on June 22, 2016. But they were released six months later, after they filed their appeals.
“The decision is very complex,” said George Calaritis, a defence lawyer who represented Xanthoudakis and Matteo in their appeals. “Once having processed it, my belief is that Mr. Xanthoudakis will take his case to the Supreme Court of Canada.”
The criminal trial was the longest to be held before a jury in Canada.
Weinberg and Xanthoudakis, the former president of Norshield Financial Group, transferred more than $123 million U.S. of Cinar’s money to the Bahamas without informing its board of directors, thereby keeping it a secret from shareholders. More than $90 million was eventually returned to Cinar,
but many people lost their life savings through their investments in the company. Before the scandal broke, Cinar was recognized around the world for producing popular animated shows for children like Arthur and Caillou from their studio in Montreal.
Matteo, the former head of Mount Real Corp., was brought in later to help hide the fraud when questions were raised. In December 2016, he also succeeded in obtaining a release while appealing the Cinar verdict. But in 2017, he received a five-year prison term following his conviction in a different case in which he was found to have violated 270 counts of Quebec’s Securities Act. Matteo was granted day parole last summer but is now required to begin serving his sentence in the Cinar case within 24 hours of the Quebec Court of Appeal decision being delivered on Tuesday.
Besides the verdicts, Weinberg and Xanthoudakis were both seeking to have their sentences reduced to five years. They argued that their sentences were disproportionate to the four-year prison term that Hasanain Panju, a former vice-president and financial director of Cinar, received in the same case. Panju pleaded guilty to fraud and related charges in 2014, a few months before the trial started. He also testified for the prosecution during the jury trial.
“The gravity of the offences is self-evident,” wrote Justice Patrick Healy, one of the three appellate court judges who heard the appeal. “The sentences imposed on the appellants are clearly in the upper end of the range of possible sentences for the offences in question, but they are neither outside an acceptable range nor disproportionate.”