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Andrew McKay

Prominent Toronto lawyer who often represents police associations and officers accused of wrongdoing. The First Response travel agency is listed as a division of Leximco Ltd., of which he is a director.





Klara Kozak

One of two partners in First Response Travel Group, an agency formed in 2014 through which OPPA members were instructed to book all travel. Christie, Bain and Walsh also own shares in the company, documents show. Kozak is also a director at Leximco Ltd., the apparent parent company of the travel agency.

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Mr. Chantiam pitched an idea, court documents allege. The union bosses listened.

“Francis talks fast and assumes we are as smart as he is,” Mr. Walsh later allegedly wrote in an email about the meeting.

It is then that a deal was forged to provide travel services for the association and its members, according to allegations made by the RCMP in documents filed in court.

But any alleged deal — and who might be profiting from it — would not become publicly known until concerned employees secretly told their view of things to the RCMP, and an Ontario Court judge unsealed the suspicions of federal investigators on Friday.

There are “reasonable grounds to believe,” the RCMP allege, that all of those involved at the meeting that day “acted together to commit criminal offences of fraud and theft against the OPPA.”

The travel deal, however, is only one startling allegation in the RCMP probe, with investigators saying it may have uncovered a pattern of both grand misappropriation — such as unusual condo purchases in the Bahamas and speculative investments in the Cayman Islands — as well as mundane office expenses and vacation time swindles.