Sarita Patel

A former director of the Kelowna branch of Adult and Teen Challenge B.C. is alleging he was fired after uncovering embezzlement by another director of the charity, who he couldn't support quickly rehiring.

Anthony Russo was a director at the faith-based charity behind the Okanagan Men’s Centre for those dealing with addictions. After being told about funds missing from charity’s safe in November, he started checking surveillance footage.

“In that security footage, I found our regional director, Mark De Koning, going into the safe and remove the cash, then remove the according receipt for that cash deposit.”

Russo says De Koning is then seen walking to the corner where he puts the receipt in the shredder.

“After I saw this happen, I went to the shredder, and was able to paste back together that receipt to show that the deposit that had gone missing — the same one he shredded.”

Russo says he tried to show the surveillance footage to the charity’s leadership, but they did not want to believe the man caught on camera was capable of theft.

“Before I even pressed play on the video, she had told me, ‘I don’t care what you show me, I don’t care what I see Mark doing, I will never believe that he stole the funds.’”

Russo says De Koning had been involved with the charity for over a decade and was a very well respected member of the organization.

Digging deeper, Russo claims he found multiple other records missing and irregularities with the charity’s firewood fundraising program that primarily deals with cash.

“Our firewood department, which four years ago was raising about $40,000 per year, had dropped two years ago to about $23,000, so a large drop.”

Russo says he looked into the gift-in-kind receipts for wood donated to the charity and found the donations of wood had stayed consistent for the past four years. He then started asking questions to the volunteers that run the program.

“I asked them if there had been a large drop in either the amount of wood that they were cutting or the amount of wood that they’ve been selling and they said the opposite — they said it should’ve been an increase in funds coming into the centre.”

With that, Russo continued to investigate and found a missing deposit for the cash sale of a trailer.

Russo confronted the charity with his findings that alleged tens of thousands of dollars taken. Russo says De Koning ended up admitting to a much smaller amount.

“For us, the matter is closed,” said Janalyn Oige, executive director for the BC Teen Challenge Kelowna chapter, declining to confirm how much money was taken.

Oige confirms that De Koning no longer works for the charity and that he resigned from his position over the allegations.

“We said to him in six months from now, should you do these things that we are asking you to do, we will consider employment again,” she said.

Russo says initially the centre wanted to bring De Koning back immediately, which he believes was wrong. He says he presented the team with a restoration project for De Koning’s return that would help heal him from his mistakes.

“A refresher program is for a student that has completed Teen Challenge. Mark was a graduated student… if one of those students relapses or ends up in a bad situation, we offer a refresher.”

The refresher program is generally a six-month to a one-year program. Russo believes the alleged theft was worse than a relapse and wanted De Koning to do the one-year ‘refresher program.’

“That was not accepted by Janalyn or the board because they wanted him back right away. I did want to have restoration, but I didn’t agree with the speed in which they wanted to integrate him in.”

Russo wanted to get the RCMP involved but instead was fired himself over the disagreement on how quickly De Koning would be reinstated.

“His character, his philosophy, does not align with what we would deem a person suitable to oversee a centre,” Oige said of Russo.

Instead of going to the RCMP, Russo said the charity wanted to present De Koning with the evidence to allow him to explain himself.

“I thought that was a problem, because from my perspective, that had the ability to impede a proper criminal investigation. We were looking at a theft over $5,000, which is a major criminal offence,” said Russo.

Oige maintains the Adult and Teen Challenge "believes in law and order.”

“If there was something that the RCMP needed to deal with or… if the public was in danger or somebody was in danger, we would always cooperate, and that was what I said to the RCMP,” said Oige.

“We’re not trying to be uncooperative here, but we also believe that we don’t want to ruin somebody’s whole life… we would rather deal with this in-house,” she said, adding new safeguards have been put in place to help them move forward.

Russo claims Adult and Teen Challenge refused to open their books to the RCMP, which has led to the Canada Revenue Agency getting involved.

Castanet reached out to the CRA, which could only confirm that Adult and Teen Challenge B.C. is a registered charity.

“However, since the CRA has neither imposed a sanction upon the charity, nor revoked or annulled its registered status, the confidential provisions of the Act prevent the CRA from commenting as to whether this charity is currently, or has previously been under audit,” the CRA said.

Russo knows himself the struggles with living with addiction. He says when he found out that De Koning was approaching clients and requesting they e-transfer monthly rent directly to him, he took it somewhat personally, claiming many of those e-transfers were never deposited into the charity's bank account.

The police questioned Adult and Teen Challenge on the rent e-transfers, and found out Oige had also received client e-transfers for their monthly rent. In her case, she would write a cheque to the charity to reimburse it.

Russo is hoping to have any student that did send an e-transfer directly to a director or an employee as opposed to directly to Teen Challenge Ministry, to send a digital copy of the receipt to [email protected].

Russo says the charity switched from full audits with an outside accounting firm to a year-end financial review by the board because it was cheaper. The Canadian Non-for-profit Corporations Act (NFP Act) states any charity bringing in “over $250,000 gross annual revenues, must have an audit,” but provincial law states a simple financial review is allowed.

Russo believes if the charity did not stop getting their yearly audits done by an outside accounting firm, the alleged embezzlement would have been caught sooner. He has advocated for the charity to go back to full audits by an outside accounting firm to give donors assurance that they were doing the right thing with donations.

Russo said he is not proceeding any legal action against the charity for wrongful termination, nor is he trying to get his position back, he just wants the truth to come out.

“The management at Teen Challenge had spoken to all the students and all of the staff and told them they are not allowed to reach out to me or speak to me, however throughout this whole process I’ve been active in communication with people.”

He says he’s built strong relationships at the centre, and when the students graduate, they actively seek him out.

“I am very fortunate right now, I have two students that have recently graduated from the program that are staying with me in my home… at least with the students and the men that I had these close bonds with, this hasn’t tarnished that,” says Russo.

De Koning has not been criminally charged with anything. He did not respond to multiple requests for comment. None of Russo’s allegations have been proven in court.