Tim Naumetz and Kathryn May, Ottawa Citizen, CanWest News Service
A Mountie sergeant who wanted to widen an investigation into the misuse of money from the RCMP pension and insurance plans says one of the force’s senior officers muzzled the probe.
Staff Sgt. Mike Frizzell told a Commons committee Tuesday that then assistant commissioner David Gork told him the investigation had no mandate to try and find whether anyone profited from contracts that broke federal procurement rules to outsource the administration of the insurance plan.
MPs questioned Frizzell about what motives might have been behind secret and complex deals that resulted in the insurance plan’s underwriter, Great West Life, acting as the “conduit” for fees paid to Morneau Sobeco, the company quietly hired to manage the running of the multimillion-dollar insurance plans.
“We were specifically told not to look into it,” Frizzell told MPs on the public accounts committee, adding that Gork told investigators that finding motives was not part of their mandate.
Frizzell was one of more than a dozen RCMP officers seconded to work on what was supposed to be an independent investigation into the pension funds led by an inspector from the Ottawa Police Service.
Dominic Crupi, the former director of the branch within the force that oversaw the pension and insurance plans, and his superior Jim Ewanovich, were “removed” from their posts after an internal audit. But he stunned MPs Tuesday when he disclosed that Gork, who previously testified he did not direct the investigation, told investigators their inquiry was limited.
“The original mandate of the investigation was to follow the pension money, where did it go, was it spent in a criminal manner,” Frizzell told the committee.
“As we had questions, we found more and more of our mandate was constricted,” he said. “At one point, I had an argument with Mr. Gork, who told me our mandate was to investigate Mr. Crupi and Mr. Ewanovich. I explained to him, ‘no we don’t investigate people, we investigate events.’ The event was misuse of the pension funds.”
Frizzell and Chief Superintendent Fraser Macaulay told the committee that the investigation should be reopened to pick up the trail that the original investigators had to drop. Frizzell has long insisted he was removed from the case after he found $600,000 was improperly withdrawn from the insurance plan.
Frizzell told MPs investigators were not given the opportunity to determine whether anyone personally profited from the pension insurance dealings.
“We never exercised any warrants on bank accounts or anything like that to be able to tell you that,” he said in response to questions from NDP MP David Christopherson.
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