Details of about $400,000 of the former ORNGE president’s expenses, plus salary, bonus and loan payments totalling an estimated $4 million over six years, would have been made public last October if Premier Dalton McGuinty had not prorogued the legislature.
“It is disappointing that information is sitting in a box instead of being used to learn more about what happened at the ORNGE air ambulance service,” Progressive Conservative MPP Frank Klees said in an interview.
An ongoing Star investigation has pierced a bit of the secrecy surrounding the box, a chronological listing of payouts from 2006 to 2012.
For Dr. Chris Mazza, ORNGE’s $1.4 million-a-year man, no expense was too small or too big to claim, according to people familiar with the records, all assembled by a team of forensic auditors. Mazza often expensed Starbucks coffees, locally and on the road. Once, ORNGE money paid off his $80,000 income tax penalty.
Surprisingly absent from the box, are many hotel, meal and flight expenses from several business trips to Italy, home of ORNGE’s helicopter manufacturer.
Mazza’s records at the publicly-funded ORNGE were sent on October 2 to the public accounts committee probing the air ambulance firm scandal following a request two months before that date by committee member Liz Sandals, a Liberal MPP. Shortly after, the legislature was prorogued and the committee, of which Klees is also a member, dissolved.
Copies of Mazza’s records are also with the criminal investigation bureau of the Ontario Provincial Police.
Mazza founded the non-profit, publicly funded ORNGE air ambulance service in 2005. He was its president and chief executive officer, and held the same post at a series of for-profit ORNGE companies he helped create.
His lawyer, Roger Yachetti, told the Star on Tuesday that he was unable to meet with Mazza this week to discuss the Star’s questions, though he forwarded them to Mazza.
The records track Mazza’s rise in salary and other payouts beginning in 2005, when he earned just under $300,000. His income rose steadily over the years, according to testimony before the committee. When he left ORNGE at the end of 2011 he was paid $1.4 million, and received an additional $1.2 million made up of a cash advance against a future bonus and housing loans.
Included in many years was a payment of as much as $400,000 to act as a sort of “medical director” for ORNGE. His former chairman, Rainer Beltzner, testified that when he looked into it he learned Mazza was receiving the amount although there were no invoices or other proof that he was doing the work. The box of records also documents bonuses paid to Mazza, which the committee heard typically comprised 50 per cent of his base salary.
In an email response to the Star’s questions, Beltzner said his board was kept in the dark, though he has now heard the province had concerns. “The real question that needs to be asked is why and how the government kept their apparent concerns secret. Board members of any organization in receipt of public funds should be very concerned with this,” Beltzner said.
One payout Beltzner said he had no knowledge of related to an income tax problem Mazza had. In his early days at ORNGE, Mazza invested in a now disallowed charity tax shelter know as the “art flip.” Under the scheme, people purchased units of art prints and then donated them to an institution which would issue a charitable receipt for many times their value. Mazza’s former right hand man at ORNGE recalls how in 2007, Mazza learned he owed the taxman $80,000 because the scheme had been ruled invalid by the courts. Jacob Blum said a deal was arranged whereby ORNGE paid Mazza $80,000 in lieu of two months vacation. “To my recollection, (Mazza) still took his vacation that year,” Blum recalled.
Tom Lepine, the former chief operating officer, said he did recall an issue related to Mazza’s vacation. “(Mazza) did get unused vacation paid out, I do not know for what years or amounts.”
Auditors and others with knowledge of the generous payouts were surprised, insiders say, to see that the apparently wealthy Mazza routinely expensed cups of coffee purchased from Starbucks, both in the GTA and while travelling. Other expenses relate to airfare (usually business class), international hotels and meals.
But not in Italy, home of AgustaWestland, the helicopter manufacturer that sold ORNGE twelve helicopters at a cost of $144 million. The Star has interviewed former ORNGE executives who say Mazza travelled there to speak to helicopter executives on several occasions. The box of records contains little, if any, information relating to those trips.
The box will remain secret until the committee is reconvened, likely after the legislature is recalled.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Kevin Donovan
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