The Globe and Mail reports in its Monday edition that recent fraud convictions, including of two men involved in the multimillion-dollar redevelopment of Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital, are being seen as a step forward in Canada's fight against white-collar crime.
The Globe's Alexandra Posadzki writes that the guilty verdict against Vas Georgiou, the hospital's former chief administrative officer, and John Aquino, the former president of Bondfield Construction, follows another high-profile fraud conviction in Ontario court earlier this year.
In May, Jawad Rathore and Vince Petrozza, the co-founders of now-defunct syndicated mortgage company Fortress Real Developments, were found guilty of fraud after a lengthy criminal trial. Experts say the pair of convictions demonstrates that Canadian law enforcement, prosecutors and courts have the capacity to tackle complex financial investigations. However, they note that more work remains for the country to shake its reputation for being lax on white-collar crime, particularly as police and securities regulators grapple with a surge of fraud enabled by new technologies such as cryptocurrencies and deepfakes generated by artificial intelligence.
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