Article content continued

Toronto Mayor John Tory, in a furious note to audit committee chair Stephen Holyday Friday, urged the committee to accept all the AG’s recommendations and said “I trust Toronto Police…have been duly notified of the issues uncovered by this investigation.”

Ironically, while the AG found many red flag indications of fraud – chiefly, shifting company names, fake bids for city tenders and $900,000 worth of city contracts signed by non-existent people — and believes, “based on the totality of the evidence” that there is “a high-risk situation for fraud”, she couldn’t prove it because of the lack of an audit trail and missing documentation.

Tory described his “utter disappointment” at Romeo-Beehler’s findings and called the lack of co-operation from some city staff as “quite simply…a disgrace.”

The report was distributed in committee agendas Friday.

It is particularly devastating because even after Romeo-Beehler’s probe started, and as late as this February when it was drawing to a close, senior officials with the city’s Facilities Management division failed to report suspected wrongdoing to her, even when specifically told to do so by Deputy Fire Chief Jim Jessop.

While the Auditor-General has jurisdiction over city buildings – they number, she said, in the thousands, and include some of Toronto’s most hallowed “civic spaces” — she has no authority over private ones.

Thus, she forwarded the full complaint to Toronto Fire, where Fire Chief Matthew Pegg immediately delegated Jessop to investigate the situation in the private sector, where condominiums, schools, hospitals and daycares rely on private firms, including the suspect one, for critical safety inspections.