Three top officials of the union for Ontario Provincial Police officers were among five people who secretly bought a travel agency in a deal partially financed with union funds, and then directed union business to it, a Toronto jury was told Tuesday.

“All five accused men worked together to hide or conceal the truth about what they were doing,” prosecutor David Friesen said during his opening remarks at the start of the fraud trial in Superior Court.

The Ontario Provincial Police Association (OPPA) has about 10,000 dues-paying members, including both uniformed police officers and civilian employees. The OPPA uses the money it collects to run its operations, including representing members in collective bargaining.

Friesen said evidence will show that the five men purchased a Kitchener travel company in 2014, and that James Christie, Karl Walsh and Martin Bain used OPPA funds to help pay for their shares.

Christie was the OPPA’s chief executive officer and president, while Walsh was the union’s chief administrative officer and Bain was a vice-president and member of the board.

Andy McKay, a lawyer who was often hired by the OPPA to represent its members, and Francis Chantiam, a Waterloo businessman with travel industry experience, also went in on the deal to buy the Leximco travel agency. It was renamed First Response Travel Group because the intent was to target the leisure travel business of police officers and other first responders, the jury heard.

Walsh then terminated Flight Centre as the OPPA’s corporate travel provider and replaced it with First Response Travel Group, the court was told.

Several OPPA board members are expected to testify the trio did not inform the union’s board about the purchase. “Karl Walsh, James Christie and Martin Bain did not disclose that they owned part of Leximco/First Response Travel,” Friesen said. “I expect the board members will testify that this ownership was a conflict of interest.”

On two large screens set up in court, jurors were shown a First Response Travel Group advertisement published in “Beyond the Badge,” the OPPA’s magazine.

The Crown’s first witness on Tuesday was Klara Kozak, a Kitchener businesswoman who was hired to run the agency’s day-to-day operations. The agency’s previous owner transferred 196 shares of Leximco to Kozak, but she testified Tuesday that she actually owned only 18 shares and held the rest in trust for the five accused.

Friesen cited an email that Chantiam sent to Walsh on May 21, 2014, which said the arrangement with Kozak would “protect you and the boys as trust agreements are not public.”

During his opening address, Friesen said the alleged fraud also involves PIN Consulting Group, a company owned by McKay that entered into a consulting contract with the OPPA. The agreement required the OPPA to pay $5,000 a month for services including real estate investments and vacation property opportunities.

The evidence will show that Walsh, Christie and Bain used the $5,000 payments from the OPPA to PIN Consulting Group to cover the cost of their shares of Leximco, Friesen said.

The purchase agreement called for each of the five accused to contribute $1,000 per share that they owned. According to the agreement, there were 196 shares in Leximco.

Walsh, Christie and Bain, who owned 98 shares, required a contribution of $98,000, Friesen said, but evidence will show together they contributed only $68,000 of their personal funds.

“You will see evidence in this trial that the remaining $30,000 came from money that the OPPA was paying to PIN Consulting Group Inc. every month,” he said.

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OPPA board members are also expected to testify they had no idea that the consulting services agreement signed by McKay and Walsh was being used to provide $30,000 of the $98,000 to pay for those shares, the Crown attorney said.

The trial is expected to hear from nine witnesses over several weeks.