{"id":286371,"date":"2025-10-08T11:18:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T11:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/286371\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T11:18:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T11:18:11","slug":"st-michaels-hospital-fraud-surfaced-with-four-brown-envelopes-sent-to-globe-and-mail-journalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/286371\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Michael\u2019s Hospital fraud surfaced with four brown envelopes sent to Globe and Mail journalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

An Infrastructure Ontario sign hangs on construction hoarding outside the St. Michael’s Hospital in downtown Toronto, March, 2018.Fred Lum\/the Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s fraud convictions<\/a> of a former senior hospital executive and a former Toronto construction boss were the culmination of a four-year police investigation and 24 days of court testimony. But for The Globe and Mail, the St. Michael\u2019s Hospital procurement scandal began more than a decade ago with the delivery of four brown envelopes. <\/p>\n

In June, 2015, four Globe journalists received identical letters in their mail slots urging reporters to ask questions about a recent decision by St. Michael\u2019s and Infrastructure Ontario to award a $300-million contract to Bondfield Construction Co. Ltd. The aging hospital was overdue for a major refurbishment, and Bondfield, a family-owned company based north of Toronto, had beaten out two larger rivals to win the contract. <\/p>\n

The anonymous author of those letters alleged that John Aquino, the president of Bondfield at that time, and Vas Georgiou, who had recently been named St. Michael\u2019s chief administrative officer, were friends and had not disclosed their ties as required during the bidding process. <\/p>\n

That tip sent The Globe\u2019s investigative team on a long, winding journey that included cultivating multiple sources with knowledge of the procurement, combing the halls of St. Michael\u2019s to verify that a tiny bottled-water company had obtained vending rights and fending off a $125-million lawsuit. <\/p>\n

The reporters\u2019 first step was connecting with insiders who were familiar with the bidding process. These individuals said they also had concerns about the competition but feared professional reprisals if they spoke out publicly. They, too, understood that Mr. Georgiou and Mr. Aquino were close but had little in the way of concrete evidence to back it up. <\/p>\n

What to know about the hospital redevelopment at the centre of the Bondfield fraud case<\/a><\/p>\n

And there was another matter they encouraged the reporters to scrutinize: Mr. Georgiou\u2019s ties to a bottled-water startup, OTEC Research, which manufactured and sold a special \u201coxygenated\u201d product known as GP8 Sportwater. Mr. Georgiou, they said, stocked the bottles in his office and at some point, after he became the hospital\u2019s second-in-command in 2013, St. Michael\u2019s installed two GP8 vending machines. <\/p>\n

The reporters pressed on for more evidence, and their big break came when one of their sources passed on a piece of information that turned out to be significant. While Mr. Georgiou was running the hospital, the source said, he was also working as a property manager of sorts at two commercial buildings, which were side by side in midtown Toronto. <\/p>\n

When the reporters looked into public records for those properties, they discovered that the companies that owned them shared a common president: John Aquino. Next, the reporters interviewed some of the commercial tenants and their representatives who confirmed that Mr. Georgiou had been their point-of-contact for any issues with the property. This meant that Mr. Georgiou, who was in charge of the St. Michael\u2019s redevelopment, was working on the side for companies owned and controlled by Mr. Aquino, the winning bidder – a relationship that Infrastructure Ontario said had not been disclosed by either man during its screening process for conflicts.<\/p>\n

The Globe detailed its findings about the properties in a story published Sept. 24, 2015<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In 2016, Mr. Georgiou confirmed, in court documents, another commercial connection to Mr. Aquino. St. Michael\u2019s had fired him in 2015, citing his alleged failure to disclose his ties to Mr. Aquino, so he sued the hospital for wrongful dismissal. In his statement of claim, he confirmed that both he and Mr. Aquino had ownership stakes in OTEC Research,<\/a> the bottled-water company. <\/p>\n

Bondfield also fought back \u2013 but against The Globe. The company sued the newspaper, the reporters and The Globe\u2019s then-publisher, Phillip Crawley, for $125-million. The company alleged The Globe\u2019s articles had the clear inference that the contract was awarded because of corruption, which it denied. <\/p>\n

The Globe sought to have the lawsuit dismissed under Ontario\u2019s Protection of Public Participation Act \u2013 a law designed to quash meritless lawsuits launched not to seek an actual remedy, but to intimidate and suppress speech in the public interest. These are often referred to as SLAPP suits (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation).<\/p>\n

Although The Globe successfully quashed the suit in 2018, the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned that decision in 2019. Shortly after, Bondfield sought protection from creditors, which effectively ended the lawsuit. <\/p>\n

By 2020, Bondfield\u2019s largest creditor, Zurich Insurance Co. Ltd., had inserted itself into the company\u2019s affairs. The multinational insurer had issued what are known as surety bonds \u2013 a guarantee of project completion \u2013 on more than $1-billion worth of public-sector contracts awarded to Bondfield. <\/p>\n

Zurich and Bondfield\u2019s court-appointed monitor, Ernst & Young, were supplied with printed-out e-mails showing Mr. Aquino and Mr. Georgiou communicating throughout the St. Michael\u2019s procurement process. <\/p>\n

Investigators for Zurich determined that Mr. Aquino had supplied Mr. Georgiou with a secret BlackBerry, which the two men used to exchange messages \u2013 communication that was supposed to be forbidden outside of official channels during the competition to win the St. Michael\u2019s contract. <\/p>\n

The BlackBerry, and those printed-out e-mails, formed the foundation of the Crown\u2019s criminal case against both men, which concluded with Tuesday\u2019s guilty verdicts. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: An Infrastructure Ontario sign hangs on construction hoarding outside the St. Michael’s Hospital…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":286372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[25549,2147,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-286371","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-aud-url","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115338275722716470","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}