Crown challenges cop on database searches
Toronto officer insists he was doing nothing wrong, wanted to check if vehicles were ‘clean’
In a fiery cross-examination, a prosecutor challenged the credibility of a Toronto police officer who has denied stealing a luxury watch and credit cards from dead people and testified he only searched secure police databases — repeatedly, on behalf of a friend — out of concern for the reputation of the Toronto Police Service.
Responding to Crown attorney Samuel Walker in a Toronto court on Thursday, Const. Boris Borissov insisted he thought he was doing nothing wrong by searching databases for vehicles associated with his friend Zvezdomir Mollov — including two Borissov had in his possession when he was arrested — because he wanted to check if they were “clean.”
“It looks awfully like some kind of stolen car ring — did that occur to you?” Walker prompted the officer in one of many tense exchanges. “Did you not report this because you were for some reason, helping?”
“Absolutely not,” Borissov said.
Borissov is facing several charges related to a series of incidents alleged to have occurred from 2020 to 2022. He has pleaded not guilty to theft, fraud or breach of trust by an official, obstruction of justice, possession of property obtained by crime exceeding $5,000, and fraudulently obtaining a computer service.
His trial, which concluded its ninth day before Judge Mary Misener on Thursday, has heard the Crown detail its case that the veteran officer abused databases, used a stolen car and took a luxury Swiss watch and credit cards from two dead people whose disappearances he’d been assigned to investigate.
Earlier this past week, Borissov, 50, testified that Mollov approached him in 2020 with a business plan to export cars to Europe, and that he searched the police databases to ensure the vehicles weren’t stolen.
On Thursday, Walker pressed Borisov on his belief that these searches were above board, noting the officer had, in the fall of 2021, taken a course teaching that the only authorized use of police databases was to collect personal information for ongoing investigations or to disclose information to comply with policing laws. “Do you remember anything in that course that would lead you to believe it is part of ‘police business’ to conduct police checks on your personal friends and associates?” Walker asked.
Borissov explained he didn’t remember the details of the course and reiterated that he believed the checks he was running constituted police business.
Walker asked the officer if he ever discussed his incorrect definition of “police business” with a supervisor. “I wish I did,” Borissov said. The officer insisted he searched Mollov’s cars as he would check up on any new friend.
Asked by Walker if he’d run searches on any other friends in his time on the force, Borissov responded that he had not made any other new friends in that time.
Borissov, who first joined the Toronto police in December 2005, has been suspended with pay since February 2022.
He also denied reading a report — which he took photographs of — indicating that a Honda Pilot he gave his wife to drive was stolen.
Borissov said he began to have suspicions about Mollov’s cars being legitimate after he searched another vehicle — an Acura Borissov drove — and found it belonged to a man wanted on fraud charges.
At the time of Borissov’s arrest, the Acura had a radio jammer in the trunk and both cars were recovered with GPS-blocking devices.
On Tuesday, Borissov testified he had unplugged the GPS jammers when he got the cars from Mollov.
One device was found operational and plugged into the Honda Pilot during a police search of the car.
Earlier at trial, a pair of construction workers testified Borissov offered to sell them a TAG Heuer watch matching one the Crown alleges was stolen from the apartment of a missing person case he’d been assigned to investigate.
Court has heard a TD credit card belonging to the same missing man was used by Mollov one day after Borissov began working on the investigation. While on bail awaiting trial, Borissov was separately arrested following a flight from Cuba in June 2023 for allegedly attempting to smuggle $10,000 worth of Cuban cigars into Canada.
The trial continues.