Judge awards legal costs to ex-bureaucrat
Crown trying to keep family from using $28M in frozen assets
A provincial bureaucrat fired after the alleged theft of $11 million in COVID-19 relief aid has been awarded $150,000 in legal costs by an Ontario court.
In a setback for Crown prosecutors, Ontario Superior Court Justice Peter Cavanagh found in favour of Sanjay Madan, who faces criminal and civil charges in the alleged fraud, and his family.
The civil Crown, which successfully froze $28 million of the family’s assets in Canada and India, had been trying to prevent the Madans from using their unfrozen funds, earmarked for their legal defence, to file counterclaims against the government.
“I do not accept the submission by the Madan defendants that the Crown, by seeking the relief it did, intended to ‘starve’ the Madan defendants into submission or that the relief sought was ‘calculated to cast a chill upon the solicitor-client relationship,’ ” Cavanagh ruled.
But the judge on Friday found the family’s lawyer was “correct that the precise form of accounting sought by the Crown was somewhat of a moving target” and awarded costs to pay for additional legal expenses.
Defence lawyer Christopher Du Vernet said Tuesday, “The government’s motion was a terrible waste of public funds and valuable court time.
“Significant cost awards such as this are essential to curtail the Crown’s continued misuse of public resources. The taxpayers deserve better than expensive, fruitless frolics like this.”
In civil court filings, the province alleges “some or all of” Madan, his spouse, Shalini, their adult sons Chinmaya and Ujjawal, and associate Vidhan Singh perpetrated “a massive fraud” to divert COVID-19 funds to numerous bank accounts at branches of TD Bank, the Bank of Montreal, the Royal Bank of Canada, Tangerine and India’s ICICI Bank.
Shalini, Chinmaya and Ujjawal have denied any wrongdoing. Singh also insists he did nothing illegal. The government’s allegations have not been proven in court.
Madan was fired in the fall of 2020 as the $176,608-a-year computer leader on the Ministry of Education’s Support for Families initiative.
That program gave parents $200 per child under age 12 and $250 per child and youth under 21 with special needs to help with online schooling expenses early in the pandemic.
Last January, in civil court testimony that may not be used in the criminal case if it violates charter-protected rights against self-incrimination, Madan admitted he “relaxed” computer security safeguards on the “free-flowing program” so additional payouts could be made to the same bank accounts.
“I thought there may be an opportunity to take the funds out … it looked like easy money for me,” he testified.
Shalini was terminated in the fall of 2020 from her $132,513-ayear Ministry of Government and Consumer Services IT manager job.
Separate criminal proceedings are under way.
Madan is charged with two counts of fraud and two counts of breach of trust. He and Shalini are also charged with possession of stolen property and laundering the proceeds of crime. Singh is charged with money laundering, fraud, and possession of stolen property.
Manish Gambhir, a Brampton computer specialist whose name has not surfaced in the civil case, is charged with possession of an identity document related — or purported to relate — to another person, and with possession of stolen property.
A publication ban protects the details of the criminal case.
In the civil matter, Crown lawyers allege Madan was the “ringleader” of a sophisticated scheme that allegedly pilfered $30 million over the decade preceding the pandemic.
That allegation bolstered the government’s efforts to freeze Madan family assets, including $12.4 million in Indian bank accounts, an $8-million Waterloo apartment complex, a sevenbedroom house in North York valued at $2.57 million and six Toronto condominiums worth more than $3 million.
“It’s not just the fraud with respect to the Support for Families program, but also kickbacks with respect to the engagement of fee-for-services consultants,” the province’s lawyer Christopher Wayland said last summer.