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The hospital laid off hundreds of employees during the same period as hospital budgets across the province were squeezed.

The hospital has passed its file, the result of a third-party audit, to Ottawa police.

Frank Medwenitsch, the former head of the hospital’s facilities and planning department, was with The Ottawa Hospital for 25 years. Among the charges against him, the hospital claims Medwenitsch arranged to have his daughters hired by two contractors involved in the scheme, but then paid at least one of them through the hospital.

In September, after being confronted with some of the claims, Medwenitsch retained counsel and met with hospital officials. During that meeting he “admitted that costs were misallocated between hospital projects and that he instructed some of the vendors to misallocate costs to other accounts, regardless of which projects actually incurred the costs,” according to the suit.

In October, Medwenitsch left the hospital.

In addition to Medwenitsch, the suit names Brock Marshall, who most recently was director of engineering and operations in the hospital’s planning department. He worked at the hospital from 1989 until his retirement in early 2015. Neither he nor Medwenitsch were available for comment.

The suit also names companies and individuals the hospital alleges were co-conspirators in the fraud. They include: Gerard Dubé of DRS Construction; Larry St. Pierre of Federal Electric Limited; Guy Adrian LaPierre of GAL Power Systems Ottawa Ltd.; Roch St.-Louis of Pro Management Construction Inc.; and Ottawa Diamond Construction Inc. All of the companies have done work on Ottawa Hospital construction and renovation projects.