The political news story that will not just go away

Bank sued Calgary MP during candidacy  CALGARY (CBC) – Calgary Conservative MP Devinder Shory knew he was linked to a mortgage fraud investigation while he was running during the last federal election.  The Bank of Montreal sued Shory, a lawyer, on July 28, 2008, nearly three months before the federal election, according to a lawsuit obtained by CBC News. In its statement of claim, the bank said it sued Shory because he ignored repeated requests to turn over all records related to five real estate transactions he had processed on behalf of the bank. According to an affidavit from a BMO investigator, the bank demanded that Shory deliver five “specific client files on an urgent basis.” The bank repeated the demand in a followup letter dated July 18, 2008, and asked for Shory’s trust ledger for the same client files. When the BMO didn’t receive the records, it eventually sued Shory for his legal work on the files in which the bank claims mortgages were falsely inflated. As CBC News first reported, Shory is among more than 300 Albertans, including 16 other lawyers, sued by the Bank of Montreal in what is believed to be the largest mortgage fraud in Canadian history. According to the July 2008 lawsuit, Shory knew as far back as June 2008 that the bank was investigating his conduct as a lawyer on cases he handled. Shory did not respond to interview requests placed by CBC News to his offices in Ottawa and Calgary. A Prime Minister’s Office spokesman said Friday he had not seen the 2008 legal documents and would have no further comment.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/cbc/100507/canada/canada_calgary_calgary_devinder_shory_bmo_court_fraud_lawsuit_sue

 

It is very naïve of the leader, prime minister  of this country to think that this issue will go away and that  the opposition will let it do so. They clearly smell blood and a chance to expose this government’s, member’s inadequacies.

 

 The bank’s statement of claim says Shory and the other Malik lawyers “owed BMO a duty of care to undertake their duties with the utmost skill, care and attention in every respect as an accepted standard of practice of a reasonably prudent solicitor.”Instead, the suits says the Malik lawyers were negligent in failing to notify BMO that third parties — unrelated to the transaction and outside the knowledge of the bank — were in fact pocketing the proceeds of the sale.”In breach of these obligations to BMO, each of the Malik lawyers failed to take the appropriate steps, which failure enabled the Malik Group and the Malik Lenders to . . . wrongfully obtain mortgage financing,” BMO said in its statement of claim. The allegations have not been proven in court.  In Ottawa, opposition MPs demanded Thursday that Shory sit as an independent until his name is cleared. “Why did the government not call in the RCMP? Why is the member still sitting in the Conservative caucus?” Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Calgary+Devinder+Shory+tight+lipped+storm+swirls+around+mortgage+lawsuit/2997385/story.html        

  

Tue May 11, 9:57 PM  EDMONTON (CBC) – A massive alleged mortgage fraud based in Calgary has touched the ranks of Alberta’s Liberal party, CBC News has learned.   Lawyer John Casuga, the former president of the Calgary Buffalo riding association, is among the hundreds of Albertans being sued by the Bank of Montreal. CBC News has also learned the Law Society of Alberta disbarred Casuga on Nov. 26, 2009, for his actions related to the alleged mortgage fraud. Law society documents obtained by CBC show Casuga faced a disciplinary hearing on 26 citations including: The most serious citation against Casuga, 37, is that he “assisted a client in committing a fraud,” states the law society document. Casuga admitted to all of the citations, except the one involving fraud. The law society forwarded the evidence from its internal investigation to the Alberta Justice department to determine if Casuga should be charged criminally. According to Alberta Justice records, no charges against Casuga have been filed. The Bank of Montreal has accused Casuga, Calgary Conservative MP Devinder Shory, and 17 other lawyers of negligence in relation to legal work that the bank says resulted in the loss of more than $30 million through falsely inflated mortgages. None of the allegations contained in the lawsuit has been proven in court. The alleged fraud scheme involved the recruitment of hundreds of people mostly new immigrants whose names and credit were used to apply for falsely inflated mortgages.   http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/cbc/100511/canada/canada_calgary_calgary_casuga_bmo_mortgage_fraud_disbar_alberta_liberals_hehr

 

 Imagine that the paid  RCMP openly admits now that for decades too it is pretentious, inadequate, incompetent, insufficient police force , when it comes to dealing with basic white collared crimes such as : Mortgage fraud, or Stock fraud, stealing from seniors. All it  the RCMP is qualified to do it give out speeding, parking tickets and to kill persons with the laser after all . It all is  especially hard for the clearly bad, inexperienced RCMP cause it takes real work. So how are they the bad  RCMP also dealing with computer fraud, money laundering by crooks, terrorists banking now too? they  do not for they expect others to do such as the banks investigators now  again too? Bad  RCMP management cannot hire competent persons for the RCMP cause it uses the RCMP Budget  money to give itself useless bonuses, expense accounts, etc?

EDMONTON (CBC) – Mortgage fraud is one of the toughest to spot and investigate, an RCMP officer with experience in the field says. Sgt. Conal Archer of the RCMP’s commercial crime unit says  “I think they’re very challenging [cases],”  “We have a number of issues. First of all, we have real estate agents to interview, mortgage brokers to interview, bankers to interview. And then we have a mortgage file to review and it’s a huge documentary evidence file that we have to review and it can take years to investigate.”  or to learn how to do it…

Useless as well Calgary Police say they haven’t decided whether a criminal investigation is warranted into allegations of one of the biggest mortgage frauds in Canadian history. Police do not want to work too hard, for too often  they have very simple minds and prefer the simple cases. Or rather no work at all.

Notice this the federal and provincial conservative law and order parties cannot get a handle or refuse to get a handle on crooked cops and bad lawyers too.. bad professionals .. wow. 

http://thenonconformer.wordpress.com/2010/04/09/the-conservative-party-that-firstly-promised-to-be-different/

No broad right to protect news sources in Canada

Top Court in Canada Limits Media on Sources New York Times - OTTAWA – Journalists do not have a constitutional right to protect the identities of their sources, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Friday.

No blanket immunity for journalistic sources, top court rules Toronto Star

Supreme Court will not give media an ‘absolute right’ to protect confidential … National Post

Montreal Gazette - Vancouver Sun - AFP - The Associated Press

all 256 news articles »

 

Common sense tell us all that even all News Reporters, Professional ones included now too,  News Media too, can be held for slander, wrongful, malicious reporting, writings.. even any person  now on the internet as well.. But still their Prosecution is not automatic the individual with the complaint now  generally still do have to pay and to go to court and prove their case openly as well.

 

No broad right to protect news sources: court    The Canadian Press  OTTAWA  The high court ruled Friday that journalists have no blanket right to shield confidential sources. One reason cited for the decision was the anarchic world of modern day information. The court ruled 8-1 against the National Post and former Post reporter Andrew McIntosh, who sought to quash a search warrant issued almost a decade ago as part of what became known as the Shawinigate affair. In finding there is no broad constitutional protection to shield sources, the justices said claims of immunity can be argued on a case-by-case basis. ”The law should and does accept that in some situations the public interest in protecting the secret source from disclosure outweighs other competing public interests – including criminal investigations,” Justice Ian Binnie wrote on the court’s behalf. ”In those circumstances, the courts will recognize an immunity against disclosure of sources to whom confidentiality has been promised.” But in the case at issue, Binnie said the needs of a police investigation trump confidentiality. He said the court recognizes there is a public interest in enabling journalists to protect the identity of confidential sources. But it has to be balanced against the competing interest of the police. Binnie wasn’t about to find a constitutional protection for journalists, noting that the term could include tweeters, bloggers and people standing on a corner shouting news at passersby. ”To throw a constitutional immunity around the interactions of such a heterogeneous and ill-defined group of writers and speakers and whichever ‘sources’ they deem worthy of a promise of confidentiality and on whatever terms they may choose to offer it . . . would blow a giant hole in law enforcement and other constitutionally recognized values such as privacy. He noted that lawyers and clients have a very strong legal shield, but lawyers are a different breed from journalists. For instance, he said there is the ”immense variety and degrees of professionalism (or the lack of it) of persons who now ‘gather’ and ‘publish’ news. ”In contrast to the legal profession, there is no formal accreditation to ‘license’ the practice of journalism and no professional organization (such as a law society) to regulate its members and attempt to maintain professional standards.” The ruling leaves Canadian journalists in the same boat as their colleagues in the United States and Britain, where there are no blanket constitutional protections for sources. Some states have their own shield laws, but they vary in how much they cover. Canadian journalists were generally pleased last December when the Supreme Court ruled that defamation and slander laws should be changed to give greater protection for communications on matters of public interest. It gave the media a stronger defence in libel cases. McIntosh had promised confidentiality for a source known only as X, who sent the reporter a document which was later denounced as a forgery. In 2000, McIntosh investigated links between then-prime minister Jean Chretien and the Grand-Mere Inn, a resort in his home riding. McIntosh reported that Chretien had called the Business Development Bank of Canada to promote a loan for the inn.  McIntosh subsequently received an envelope from X containing what appeared to be a 1997 internal loan document from the bank. It said a $615,000 loan to Grand-Mere allowed the company to pay an outstanding $23,000 debt to a Chretien family corporation.   The bank said the document was a forgery. McIntosh testified that X told him the document had arrived by mail anonymously and X forwarded it, believing it to be genuine. In 2001, the RCMP were called in. They wanted to test the document and envelope for DNA or fingerprints – which would likely have identified X. They obtained a search warrant and an assistance order. The order required the National Post to help find the document, which McIntosh said he had hidden in a safe place not in the newspaper’s offices. The newspaper went to court to fight the warrant and order. It’s not clear where the case stands, said Doug Kelly, editor-in-chief of the National Post. ”What happens now is we talk to our lawyers and our lawyers talk to the RCMP and they try to ascertain from the RCMP whether they are interested in continuing a nine-year old case.” McIntosh, who left the newspaper several years ago and splits his time between the United States and Canada, did not reply to emails seeking his reaction. Jacobsen said the Crown likely wants to go ahead, given the time and effort it spent going all the way to the Supreme Court. And, he said, McIntosh has few options if he’s asked to hand over the material. ”Ultimately, if he doesn’t do it he could be found in contempt. If he were in Canada and he was found in contempt he could end up having to go to jail.”
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100507/national/craft_scoc_sources