Another week of digging into the Crocus story, spurred on by more Tom Brodbeck bombshells about the Crocus Investment Fund in the Sun over the weekend. Then we got into the act by getting our own copy of the newest batch of leaks coming out of the Department of Finance. The Free Press didn't have em, the Tories didn't have em, but we did after an on-air surprise email. It led to us breaking more news and analysis that closed the gap between the NDP government and the collapse of the Fund.
Monday: We kicked things off with an interview with Sprinfield MLA Ron Schuler. Tarring the government as being knee deep in covering their tracks, Schuler said the Brodbeck excerpts proved that the government knew about trouble at Crocus and should never have allowed John Loewen to be stifled by Crocus officials when he tried to raise alarms in Feb. 2002. While he was defending Loewen, an email arrived on our screen with the emails in full, a startling sequence outlining a discussion between senior Finance officials in November 2000 as Selinger was briefing cabinet.
The emails made clear, that Crocus was headed for trouble when shares were scheduled for redemption, because no one wanted to buy the companies their investments were tied up in. It was in plain English, that monies from new investors were going to have to be used to pay off people cashing out- instead of being invested in Manitoba businesses as required by the law. And despite government protests that they didn't do anything to prop up the fund, it was apparent various changes were made in the years after that had been specifically asked for by Crocus management.
Schuler again went over what happened at the Public Accounts meeting and said that it was now glaringly obvious the government has tip-toed around questions of who knew what and when, and that the Singleton audit never could have been based on this earliest evidence of red flags waving inside the government.
Data Analyst Paul Sveinson came on the line and said that the emails proved that the prospectuses were misleading for years. He said focus should also turn to the role of the Fund's underwriter, Wellington West, and the auditor PriceWaterhouse Coopers, who signed off on the prospectuses knowing that a Ponzi scheme was at play. We also broke the news that Sveinson had filed a complaint with the Federal Auditor-General Sheila Fraser, asking her to investigate because 50% of the tax credits were from the federal treasury.
In other news, we noted that news of the Spirited Energy audit was 6 days old and still hadn't rated as news in te pages of the evidentally conflicted Winnipeg Free Press.
Frank the Italian Barber joined the show to review the suspension of Islander star Chris Simon for stick-mugging a Ranger player in the mush; the suspension of NHLPA exec Ted saskin during an investigation into accessing players email accounts, and the life and times of former Grambling and AFL football legend and pro wrestling headliner Ernie "the Cat" Ladd. Ladd, who passed at age 68, was the biggest man in both sports in his day, helped conquer racial divides in locker rooms and had influence with 2 US presidents.
Tuesday: The Spirited Energy audit still hadn't hit the pages of the Free Press but the leaks that appeared in the Sun on the weekend finally made it to page A6. However Brodbeck unleashed anotyher leaked document in todays paper, keeping the Freep way behind the curve.
We looked deeper into the details of the emails, and took advantage of a rare opportunity to look inside the workings of government to see how they assessed, analyzed and prepared spin over the brewing Crocus debacle. The emails opened a window into how they massaged the trust relationships with Crocus, as senior Finance officials debated which kinds of legislative changes to recommend if any. The practice of "good news signed by minister, bad news by deputy" was one lesson we learned; another was that the bureaucrats read the mood and correctly surmised that Crocus officials would wave the letter sent by the government as a shield against any future scrutiny by the Industry department.
Bernie Bellan said he was of the view that Finance Minister Selinger may have had very good intentions by propping up the Fund with the changes, but that Bellan and other shareholders had been duped and the province had to carry the bag.
One of the legislative changes made was to allow investors to re-up without a cooling-off period as was originally required; Crocus needed the money to pay off other shareholders and Bellan (for one), saw the change as a vote of confidence for the Fund's health, rolled his money over into the Ponzi trap and gotten fleeced by the false prospectus. Bellan also read between the lines of a statement made by Selinger to the Accounts Committee that the shareholders would have some satisfaction via the class action suit, which Bellan interpreted as meaning the government would rather negoiate a settlement than slug it out in court. He also raised the same questions Sveinson had, about the role of the underwriter and auditors in failing to report the problems to the Securities Commission.
During our news round-up we read the report of 3 boys being arrested for mowing down the Wellington Crescent jogger, and realized that one of them had also been involved in last week's demolition derby on Boyd Avenue. One of the other boys had been awol from his probation officer for 3 weeks. So much for the province's monitoring protocol as an effective deterrent.
Wednesday: CTV crime guy Kelly Dehn reviewed the arrest of 3 youths in the Jogger run-down, and said that the public outrage in this matter was going to force some serious political repercussions at the provincial and federal level. He also discussed the federal Liberals announcement they wanted to commit $2 million dollars to fight crime in a suddden conversion to a law and order platform for the next election. "Professor" Dave levinski called in and in a serious vein, said the plice should be recognized for announcign that many suspects and perps of youth crime like car theft are voctims of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and lack basic hard wiring to know right from wrong. He went on to ay that FASD had to be dealt with as a health issue so as to recognize potential problem kids and engage in deterence strategies.
Our other news focus was on the Crocus leaked documents and our reading of them, that the "higher authority" mentioned in the Singleton audit who evidentally authorized certain practices of the Crocus operation - now that we know all of Cabinet was briefed and that Finance made legislative changes in response to Crocus' appeal for help, was the higher authority actually all of Cabinet and not just a single indiviuidual as had been theorized for 2 years?
In sports, we broke the story of Winnipeg boxer Chad Brisson, who went to Federal District Court in Philadelphia to get out of a restrictive contract with big time promoter Russell Peltz. The lightweight contender made Peltz back down and rip up the deal, in the face of damaging evidence that Brisson was being manipulated to sign a new long term deal before getting his promised fights and expenses.
The Sun's Paul Friessen wrote a column attacking Mayor Katz for his analysis of the Blue Bombers "in the black" budget announcement and pointing out the team still owed $3 million for a loan middlemanned by Winnipeg Enterprises. Katz said the team was basically in the red especially when the tax concessions and other government grants were factored in (and what if the Grey Cup hadn't rolled into town?). Friessen made claims about the amount of money that went into Katz' Goldeyes stadium, inflating the correct figure by millions, and insisted that Katz was fronting for David Asper's take-over/stadium bid because the naming rights to the Goldeys home park were due to expire in 2 years.We clarified the obvious mistakes and also explained the naming rights weren't up for another 20 years.
Most importantly, Friessen senselessly ragged on the Mayor for insisting the Stakeholders Committee hadn't been legally disbanded. Friessen repeated the Bombers lie -- and left out the part where Premier Doer himself had stepped forward months ago to say, the team was wrong and the Mayor was right, and the Stakeholders Ie the city and province -- still had a say in the team.
Thursday: Tom Brodbeck returned to the show and went over the leaks from insiders about Crocus as it dissolved. He also joined in a dramatic recreation of an interview on CJOB's Larry Updike with Premier Doer, where Doer avoided every question about what the government knew in 2002 and 2000, claiming it was all covered by the Singleton audit. This was far from true as Singleton only reviewed material from 2002 onward.
Tom also disputed the Tories procliaming John Loewen was a champion of the Crocus shareholders, telling the story of how Loewen clammed up and didn't provide the media with a single angle or lead to pursue after he suddenly cancelled his Feb. 2002 press conference when threatened with lawsuits by Crocus heavyweights.
In sports we debuted the special Fan Commentary segment and the voice of the controversial Brother Midnite was heard loud and clear. Somehow the enigmatic former cable TV personality connected the laws of the jungle- literally talking about the temperment of walruses - "or is it walrii?" with the spate of violent on-ice incidents in the NHL. You had to hear it to believe it.
Finally Red River College filmmaker Sean Best debuted his short about backyard wrestling called "The Main Event" at the Garrick this morning, starring a bunch of untrained pretend wrestlers from Winnipeg and Winnipegosis bashing each other with light tubes and other plunder, and the efforts of a certain talk show host to make sure parents and kids knew it was an uncool practice with his annual Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) educational campaign. Kids, get proper wrestling training and don't imitate what you see on TV.
Friday: The new car theft stats were subject to another Brodbeckian going-over in the Sun and his column explained that even with the cold snap, we are headed for a record year in thefts and attempted thefts, on pace for over 14,000. We also did our best to wrap up our week and review all the interviews on the Crocus file.
The Winnipeg Sun was looking to buy-out 6 editorial stafferers in light of centralization by Quebecor, while the Free Press continued to ignore the Spirited Energy audit, pretended the latest leaks about Crocus didn't exist, and printed outtakes of an interview transcript with NDP MP Pat Martin who backtracked on his theory the NDP may have to look at merging with the Liberals federally and claimed to have been misquoted by reporter Joe Paraskevas.
The death of former Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn was the focus of sports. Kuhn presided over a period of enormous change in MLB including suspending 30 game winner Dennis McClain for gambling, instituting league playoffs and night World Series games, bringing in the designated hitter in the American League, standing up to firesales of star players by Oakland A's owner Charlie O. Finley, suspending powerful owners George Steinbrenner and Ted Turner, and the strike of 1981 which was the end of Kuhn's reign.
Our first Cody report hit the airwaves with a preview of weekend fun Peggers could get into.
