Three experts in elections law will decide Monday whether to begin the process of prosecuting Mayor Rob Ford for alleged violations of the Municipal Elections Act.

An audit released Feb. 1 identified numerous “apparent contraventions.” At Monday’s meeting, the city’s compliance audit committee will either initiate legal proceedings or close the case.

If the committee votes to proceed, the city will hire a special prosecutor to consider non-criminal charges. That prosecutor would decide which charges to bring, if any. Possible penalties include a fine and removal from office; removal is highly unlikely.

The Star will liveblog the proceedings at 2 p.m. We’ll also chat with readers on thestar.com at noon.

The audit was led by Bruce Armstrong of the firm Froese Forensic Partners. Here are a dozen of the most serious ways in which Armstrong believes Ford appears to have broken the law:

1 No-interest loan from a family company

Doug Ford Holdings is a Ford family holding company that owns the family’s better-known company, Deco Labels and Tags. Its directors are Rob Ford, Councillor Doug Ford, their brother Randy Ford, and their mother Diane Ford.

In the first three months of the run for office, when the campaign did not have the cash it needed, Doug Ford Holdings paid $77,722 worth of expenses — seven invoices in all, including a $25,380 bill for the campaign kickoff event, $23,100 to a polling company, and $3,000 for the services of adviser Mark Towhey.

The campaign paid back Doug Ford Holdings about a year later, in April 2011, without interest. The auditor believes these “generous” no-interest credit terms amount to a prohibited corporate donation, since the campaign avoided an estimated $3,444 in interest.

The auditor also says the campaign appeared to violate the law both by failing to pay its bills from its own accounts and by failing to record the $3,444 in avoided interest as an expense. Finally, the auditor also notes that campaigns can obtain loans only from “a bank or other recognized lending institution”; Doug Ford Holdings, the auditor wrote, is not one of them.

2 No penalty for paying Deco late

The campaign spent $119,372 at Deco. The company, according to the auditor, made sure not to sell its products to the campaign any cheaper than it sold to others. But it did offer preferential credit terms, the auditor wrote, by allowing the campaign to pay the bills very late — one was 237 days overdue — without charging interest that should have amounted to an estimated $943. This appears to be another illegal corporate contribution, the auditor wrote, and another unreported expense.

3 Events improperly identified as fundraisers

Under elections law, there is a crucial difference between fundraising events and events whose primary purpose is to promote the candidate: money spent on a promotional event is counted against the campaign’s $1.3-million spending limit, while the cost of a fundraiser is not.

The campaign listed 21 events as fundraisers. According to the auditor, four of them were actually promotional events — which means that, in the auditor’s view, the $32,422 in expenses associated with them should not have been exempted from the limit. It is mostly because of these expenses that the auditor believes the campaign overspent by a total of $40,168.

At all four of the events, the money spent by the campaign far exceeded the money raised. At one of them, a “Boys Night Out,” $300 was spent but nothing raised; at another, at the Grand Baccus banquet facility, $27,796 was spent and a mere $2,920 raised. Regarding this event, the auditor wrote, “We identified few (if any) expenses that could be specifically identified as fundraising.”

Doug Ford, his brother’s campaign manager, continues to argue that the Grand Baccus event was a fundraiser. He says the campaign mailed a post-event fundraising letter to attendees.

4 Accepted corporate money

Toronto banned campaign donations from corporations and unions in 2009, but the campaign was nonetheless sent some donations from companies in addition to the 2,500-plus donations it received from individuals.

In “a number” of cases, the auditor wrote, the Ford campaign returned those donations to the donors or forfeited them to the city. But in 11 cases, the auditor wrote, campaign improperly accepted the corporate money — then recorded the donation in the name of an individual, another apparent violation.

The biggest corporate donation that was accepted, $2,500, was from former premier Mike Harris’s company, Steane Consulting. The second-biggest, $1,100, was from Paul Singh of Etobicoke’s Singh Food Centre.

5 Accepted cash donations

Candidates can’t accept cash donations larger than $25. Though the campaign forfeited $13,249 in cash to the city, and returned other cash donations to donors, the auditor says the campaign also converted 21 cash donations, totaling $4,400, into money orders that were deposited into campaign coffers. “It is unclear why some cash contributions were converted to money orders and others returned to contributors or forfeited to the city,” the auditor wrote.

6 Too-early expenses

Candidates are allowed to incur expenses only after they register to run. The auditor identified $5,805 worth of expenses Ford appears to have incurred before he registered, including $2,209 to Deco for 500 “Ford for Mayor” signs, $2,500 for campaign software, $256 for the T-shirts worn by the supporters who accompanied him to City Hall to file his papers, and $840 to charter a bus to take them downtown.

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7 Pre-election fundraisers with no expenses attributed to them

The campaign benefited from five pre-election fundraisers organized by groups outside the campaign — among them the law firm McCarthy Tetrault and the charitable Mon Sheong Foundation — but did not list these events on its financial statements as required, the auditor wrote.

When campaigns get goods and services donated to them — for example, restaurant food or a party room — they must list the value of the goods and services as a donation. They must also list that value as a campaign expense. In all five cases, the auditor wrote, the campaign did neither.

“A nominal amount at a minimum should have been attributed as a contribution-in-kind and a corresponding expense,” the auditor wrote.

8 Problems with reporting of post-election events

AM640 radio host John Oakley hosted a fundraising dinner for the campaign at Harbour 60 steakhouse in June 2011. The two owners of the restaurant paid the bill, $9,152, which the auditor believes is a violation of the $2,500-per-person donation limit. The auditor also says the campaign failed to record the in-kind contribution and the expense.

The campaign also committed a violation by attributing $19,500 in donations to a “Bromell event” that never actually occurred, according to the auditor. In fact, the auditor wrote, that $19,500 was raised at a developers’ fundraising event held at the home of Empire Communities’ Paul Golini — and the campaign also incorrectly attributed $25,000 in donations to that event.

In fact, the auditor wrote, the $25,000 was raised at an unreported event that was organized by Mike Harris and involved real estate executive Robert DeGasperis.

9 Other unreported contributions and expenses

In addition to the no-interest credit from the two family companies, there are other cases in which the campaign “received preferential treatment,” the auditor wrote. The first: the $840 cost of the chartered bus was paid for by Doug Ford, not the campaign, through his shareholder loan account. The second: the campaign rented a 2001 RV for $1,808, $2,084 less than the auditor’s calculation of its fair market value. Doug Ford disputes this calculation.

10 Non-campaign legal expense

The campaign paid a $1,130 bill from lawyer Julian Porter that “should have been an expense of the candidate,” the auditor wrote, since it was not related to the campaign.

11 Disputed invoice

The campaign was billed $71,167 by a company called Wexler Productions, which provided lighting, sound, broadcasting resources, and a media stage for Ford’s victory party. Doug Ford argued that this amount was excessive, and the campaign paid only $35,000. The auditor says the campaign’s failure to pay the whole bill is an apparent violation of the section of the law that says “costs incurred for goods or services . . . are expenses.”

12 Campaign staffer’s unpaid salary

The salary of one campaign staffer, administrative and accounting assistant Mandy Beaton, was paid by Deco, then reimbursed by the campaign. But Deco only billed the campaign for three or Beaton’s six months of work — and therefore saved the campaign $11,945 that the auditor says the campaign failed to record as an in-kind contribution by Deco and as a campaign expense. The auditor also believes the campaign improperly attributed all of Beaton’s salary to fundraising, making it exempt from the spending limit, rather than correctly dividing it in half between fundraising and administration. A total of $11,773, the auditor wrote, should have been subject to the spending limit.