Vas Georgiou, former chief administrative officer of Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital, walks into the Superior Court Justice, in Toronto, on Nov. 22.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
The former chief administrative officer of Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital told his trial on Monday that he did not break the facility’s conflict of interest policies by not disclosing business ties to the president of a construction company that went on to win a $300-million redevelopment contract.
Vas Georgiou, 60, was testifying in his own defence at his criminal trial, where he and John Aquino, the former president of Bondfield Construction Co. Ltd., are each charged with two counts of fraud over $5,000 stemming from the redevelopment of the Toronto hospital. Both men have pleaded not guilty and the allegations against them have not been proved in court.
Under questioning from his lawyer, Peter Brauti, Mr. Georgiou said he did not consider the work he was doing for a commercial real estate company controlled by Mr. Aquino or a bottled-water venture the two men had an interest in as conflicts that required disclosure. A document Mr. Georgiou signed as part of the hospital procurement process and presented in court declares that he did not have “any interests, activities or relationships, financial or otherwise,” to the bidders nor is he providing any services to them.
The trial has heard that at the same time Mr. Georgiou was evaluating bids for the St. Michael’s project, he was also working on the side for Mr. Aquino’s real estate company. Mr. Georgiou testified that he did not have a financial interest in Gervais Property Management Inc., which owned two commercial buildings on Gervais Drive in north Toronto. He added that the company “was not tied to the hospital project in any way.”
As for OTEC Research, which manufacturers GP8 sport water, Mr. Georgiou said he owned a “very small percentage” of the company by the time he joined St. Michael’s in January, 2013.
Asked whether Mr. Aquino purchased shares in either Gervais or OTEC for him, Mr. Georgiou said: “No, he did not.”
The Crown’s case against Mr. Georgiou and Mr. Aquino in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice focuses on their alleged undisclosed business connections, as well as their alleged secret communications throughout the bidding process for the lucrative St. Michael’s project, which Bondfield won in 2015.
These alleged communications took place over a bondfield.com e-mail address, bccldevelopment@bondfield.com, and a BlackBerry that Mr. Aquino gave to Mr. Georgiou. The Crown has alleged that Mr. Georgiou used the BlackBerry to leak confidential information about the procurement to Mr. Aquino.
During his testimony, Mr. Georgiou offered an entirely different explanation as to why Mr. Aquino supplied him with the BlackBerry in August, 2013 – the same month Bondfield and two rival construction companies were invited to submit bids for the St. Michael’s project, known as a request for proposal, or RFP. Mr. Georgiou said he and Mr. Aquino used the phone to talk about Gervais, which was going through challenges around this time, trying to refinance its buildings.
“Mr. Aquino suggested that even if the RFP is issued, it might be easier to communicate through a dedicated phone,” he said.
Mr. Brauti presented phone records and e-mails in court that show Mr. Georgiou and Domenic Dipede, Bondfield’s chief financial officer at the time, spoke for 12 minutes on Aug. 27, 2013. The following day, Mr. Aquino e-mailed Mr. Dipede, who also handled his personal investments, asking whether he had spoken to Mr. Georgiou. Mr. Dipede responded that Mr. Georgiou had set up a meeting with an appraiser for the Gervais buildings.
Only a small number of the communications between Mr. Aquino and Mr. Georgiou on his Bondfield-supplied e-mail address exist. According to an agreed statement of facts filed in court, staff at Bondfield discovered printed e-mails between Mr. Aquino and BCCLDevelopment in a folder in Mr. Aquino’s office in March, 2020.
In September, 2015 – after The Globe and Mail published stories revealing Mr. Aquino and Mr. Georgiou’s alleged business ties – Mr. Aquino directed a Bondfield staff member to delete more than 5,000 e-mails. As a result, no BCCLDevelopment@bondfield.com e-mails exist on the company’s e-mail archiver.
Mr. Georgiou said he got involved with OTEC in 2001, when he was working at St. Joseph’s Health Centre; a physician and good friend invited him to invest in the company. Mr. Georgiou invested $100,000 through his family-owned company, Arsenal Facilities Consultants, according to his testimony on Monday. He said Mr. Aquino also invested in OTEC that year.
Mr. Georgiou said he did not participate in subsequent cash calls made by the company from 2009 to 2011. By the time he joined St. Michael’s, he said, he owned a 1-per-cent to 1.5-per-cent equity interest in OTEC. “But there was no market for the shares so they were worth zero,” he said.
Special to The Globe and Mail