Vas Georgiou, left, and John Aquino walk into the Superior Court of Justice Courthouse in Toronto, on Nov. 12, 2024. Mr. Aquino and Vas Georgiou are each charged with two counts of fraud over $5,000. Both have pleaded not guilty.The Globe and Mail
An Ontario court judge presiding over the criminal trial of two men facing fraud charges stemming from the $300-million redevelopment of Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital will announce his verdict Tuesday.
Vas Georgiou, a former chief administrative officer of St. Michael’s, and John Aquino, the former president of Bondfield Construction Co. Ltd., are each charged with two counts of fraud over $5,000. Both men have pleaded not guilty.
Superior Court Justice Peter Bawden will decide their fate after 24 days of testimony last November and December, marking the culmination of a process that has spanned 10 years. The hospital project is seven years behind schedule and has resulted in a barrage of litigation, as well as the criminal charges.
At a June hearing, Justice Bawden addressed written closing arguments submitted by Crown prosecutors and defence lawyers. He told the court the public was counting on a fair competition for the hospital redevelopment. Instead, he said, the procurement was “tainted” by the conduct of the two accused.
“What the public have lost is the belief that this very expensive procurement would be fair without interference by anybody, and what they have is something that stinks,” Justice Bawden said.
The Crown’s case against Mr. Georgiou and Mr. Aquino focuses on their alleged undisclosed business connections, as well as their alleged secret communications throughout the bidding process for the hospital project, which Bondfield won in 2015.
These alleged communications took place over a bondfield.com e-mail address and a BlackBerry that Mr. Aquino gave to Mr. Georgiou. The Crown alleges the electronic device was for the purpose of communicating in secret about the procurement and provides the “most egregious examples of criminality.”
Defence lawyers have countered that the Crown is overstating the secret nature of the BlackBerry, adding that breaking the rules is not always a criminal act.
The charges against the two men, unveiled in March, 2023, followed a four-year probe by Ontario’s Serious Fraud Office, a group of police officers and prosecutors set up in 2018 to investigate financial crime.
Mr. Georgiou testified in his own defence last December, giving prosecutors their first opportunity to directly question one of the accused. During cross examination over three days, they asked Mr. Georgiou several questions about his e-mail communications with Mr. Aquino.
The patient care tower at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, in August, 2018.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
The only surviving content on Mr. Georgiou’s bondfield.com e-mail account was between him and Mr. Aquino on the May, 2014, long weekend – three days before the deadline for hospital bids. On May 18, Mr. Georgiou advised Mr. Aquino to keep certain costs out of Bondfield’s proposed price, explaining that he could “always fight later when we are No. 1,” one e-mail reads.
In their written submission, Crown prosecutors note that Mr. Georgiou, a busy executive away with his wife for a personal trip in England during the long weekend, answered Mr. Aquino’s questions, thus underscoring the close ties between the two men.
At the one-day hearing in June, Justice Bawden speculated that had Mr. Aquino not been “coached” by Mr. Georgiou, the procurement could have failed or proceeded at a higher price.
Peter Brauti, Mr. Georgiou’s lawyer, told the court at that hearing that Bondfield was the uncrowned winner of the procurement by May, 2014, because the two other companies bidding on the project had submitted bids well in excess of the budget. Any rule-breaking, he said, did not result in an unfair outcome. And if the outcome was fair, he said, there was no fraud.
Alan Gold, Mr. Aquino’s lawyer, told the court that the May, 2014, e-mail exchange between his client and Mr. Georgiou did not “cost victims any money” and, therefore, did not constitute fraud.
The St. Michael’s procurement case dates back to 2015, when Bondfield, a once-prominent Ontario construction company, was selected as the winning bidder to redevelop the hospital.
A series of Globe and Mail stories published in 2015 and 2016 revealed that while Mr. Georgiou was working as one of the evaluators of Bondfield’s bid for the hospital project, he was personally involved in two businesses owned by Mr. Aquino. After an internal investigation, the hospital fired Mr. Georgiou in 2015, alleging his business ties with Mr. Aquino had not been disclosed.
The project, which includes a new 17-storey patient care tower, an expanded emergency department and a renovated intensive-care unit, was initially set for completion in 2019.
Bondfield sought bankruptcy protection in 2019, leaving the company’s multinational insurer, Zurich Insurance Co. Ltd., to assess claims from Bondfield’s unpaid subcontractors.
Sabrina Divell, a spokesperson for Unity Health Toronto, the hospital network that includes St. Michael’s, said the renovations are on track to be finished in 2026.