John Aquino arrives at the Superior Court of Justice Courthouse in Toronto on Tuesday.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
A former executive at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital and the former president of Bondfield Construction Co. Ltd. have been convicted of fraud in the multimillion-dollar redevelopment of the health care facility over allegations that the bidding process was tainted by favoritism and conflicts of interest between the two men.
Vas Georgiou, 61, a former chief administrative officer of St. Michael’s, and John Aquino, the 53-year-old former president of Bondfield, had each been charged with two counts of fraud over $5,000. Both men had pleaded not guilty.
The verdict was delivered Tuesday after 24 days of testimony last November and December, marking the culmination of a process that spanned 10 years. The hospital project is now scheduled for completion in 2026, seven years behind schedule, and has resulted in a barrage of litigation, as well as the criminal charges.
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 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 Crown’s case against the men focused on those alleged undisclosed business connections, as well as their alleged secret communications throughout the bidding process for the $300-million project, which Bondfield won in 2015.
What to know about the hospital redevelopment at the centre of the Bondfield fraud case
Superior Court Justice Peter Bawden told a provincial courtroom on Tuesday that the impact of Mr. Georgiou’s and Mr. Aquino’s “dishonest conduct” ripples well beyond St. Michael’s Hospital.
“Their actions demonstrate that even a well-regulated process may be susceptible to corruption at senior levels,” Justice Bawden says in his 135-page written decision.
“This undermines trust in public procurement and may discourage qualified bidders from participating in future projects, thereby weakening competition and damaging the integrity of the market.”
St. Michael’s and Infrastructure Ontario, the provincial Crown agency that oversees large public-sector projects, have stringent rules designed to select a qualified contractor to build hospitals, court houses and other buildings through a fair and transparent process. Justice Bawden said he is satisfied “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the men’s conduct compromised that objective. He found that they defrauded the broader public as well as the hospital and Infrastructure Ontario.
Mr. Georgiou, a long-time senior public servant, was intimately familiar with his obligation to declare any conflicts of interest arising from his business ties to Mr. Aquino. Prior to joining St. Michael’s in 2013, he held various executive positions at Infrastructure Ontario, where he helped draft its conflict-of-interest rules for procurement projects, the court was told last year. He also had a long career managing construction projects at other hospitals, including Markham Stouffville Hospital.
Mr. Aquino was also well aware of the rules requiring him to disclose any conflicts of interest when Bondfield bid on Infrastructure Ontario projects. The agency has awarded several major hospital development projects to Bondfield, a once-prominent family-owned and operated construction company in Vaughan, north of Toronto.
The alleged communications between the men took place over a bondfield.com e-mail address – BCCLDevelopment – and a BlackBerry that Mr. Aquino gave to Mr. Georgiou. Justice Bawden agreed with the Crown’s argument that the electronic device was for the purpose of communicating in secret about the hospital procurement. The information Mr. Georgiou provided to Mr. Aquino was “confidential, highly material, and obviously intended to assist Bondfield to win the procurement,” his decision says.
Alan Gold, a lawyer for Mr. Aquino, told reporters outside the courtroom on Tuesday that he needs to examine the judgment very carefully.
“But on the face of what the judge said today,” Mr. Gold said, his findings appear to be “quite problematic as a matter of law.”
Peter Brauti, a lawyer for Mr. Georgiou, told reporters he was disappointed with the judgment. “We’ll review it and see where we go from there,” he said.
The case was heard by a judge and no jury, and both men will be back in court on Oct. 21 to set a date for sentencing arguments. According to the Criminal Code, fraud over $5,000, of which Mr. Georgiou and Mr. Aquino were each found guilty of two counts, carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.
What to know about the hospital redevelopment at the centre of the Bondfield fraud case
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.
Unity Health Toronto, the hospital network that includes St. Michael’s, fully co-operated with the investigation, said spokesperson Sabrina Divell. “Criminal wrongdoing was isolated to this former executive,” she said.
Infrastructure Ontario spokesperson Ian McConachie said inquiries should be directed to the Ministry of the Attorney General. The ministry did not respond to The Globe.
Mr. Georgiou testified in his own defence last December, giving prosecutors their first opportunity to directly question one of the accused. During his cross-examination over three days, they asked him several questions about his e-mail communications with Mr. Aquino.
Mr. Georgiou told the court that he did not breach his conflict-of-interest declaration because he always put the hospital’s interests first, that he did not provide any confidential information to Mr. Aquino and that he believed Bondfield was the only bidder for the project that could submit a compliant design at an affordable price.
“I do not believe any of that testimony and find that none of it could reasonably be true,” Justice Bawden says in his decision. “The evidence that the defendants acted dishonestly over the course of the procurement process is overwhelming.”
The St. Michael’s procurement case dates back to 2015, when Bondfield was selected as the winning bidder to redevelop the hospital.
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, but is now on track to be finished in 2026.
Bondfield sought bankruptcy protection in 2019, leaving the company’s multinational insurer, Zurich Insurance Co. Ltd., to assess claims from Bondfield’s unpaid subcontractors.
Once installed in Bondfield’s head office, officials from Zurich discovered that Mr. Aquino had ordered his IT staff to wipe all references to Mr. Georgiou from the company’s e-mail server in September, 2015, when The Globe began publishing stories about the close ties between the two men.
However, printouts of some of the e-mails between Mr. Aquino and BCCLDevelopment survived. They were discovered in a folder labelled “SMH Cash Allowances” in Mr. Aquino’s office, when Bondfield staff were packing up its offices to move to a new location in 2020.
Vas Georgiou leaves the Superior Court of Justice Courthouse in Toronto on October 7, 2025. (Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail)Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
The printed e-mails between Mr. Georgiou and Mr. Aquino on the May, 2014, long weekend – three days before the deadline for hospital bids – epitomize their “dishonest conduct,” the judge says in his decision.
In one e-mail, 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.” In another e-mail, he advised Mr. Aquino to move items into cash allowances – fixed dollar amounts that all bidders were required to set aside for certain parts of the project – because “low base gets first crack.”
“The evidence establishes that Mr. Georgiou and Mr. Aquino were allied from the outset, with the shared objective of maximizing Bondfield’s chances of being selected,” the decision says.
The judge said the case against Mr. Aquino relies more heavily on his failure to disclose information he was obligated to provide. He says Mr. Aquino acted dishonestly by failing to declare his business ties to Mr. Georgiou and by “fraudulently communicating in secret with Mr. Georgiou” during the bidding process.