The provincial public inquiry into Winnipeg’s police headquarters project entered its fifth week with testimony from experts in construction progress payments and forensic accounting.
The inquiry was called to further examine the $214-million purchase-and-renovation project. The project has already been the subject of two city-commissioned audits, a five-year RCMP investigation that concluded without charges, and a pair of lawsuits launched by the City of Winnipeg.
The quasi-judicial proceeding, which is slated to run until June, is its second phase, which focuses on construction invoices and payments.
The inquiry heard testimony Monday afternoon from David Kimber, an expert in certifying construction payments.
Kimber, who works for consulting firm Deloitte, told the inquiry progress payments on the construction project lacked the detail he would have expected to see from a project on that scale.
He flagged a $20-million change order — a request to change or increase the project’s scope and cost — as highly unusual in October 2013, when the construction project was well underway.
Kimber said the request to amend numerous aspects of the construction project should have been made earlier.
“That just does not happen overnight,” he told the inquiry. “I’ve never seen that before. It would trigger a whole bunch of questions.”
Shell company flow-through explored
The inquiry heard testimony from Gina Campbell, a forensic accountant with Deloitte, on Monday morning.
The inquiry hired her to review the flow of project funds through Triple D Consulting Services. The shell company listed Pamela Anderson — the office manager of police headquarters contractor Caspian Construction — as a director, along with Peter Chang of project design firm Adjeleian Allen Rubeli and Patrick Dubuc of GRC Architects, a subcontractor of Adjeleian Allen Rubeli.
Campbell testified Adjeleian Allen Rubeli paid $1.3 million to Triple D, which then paid $399,000 to a Chang-controlled company called PJC Consulting and $462,000 to a Dubuc-controlled company called PHGD Consulting.
The inquiry was told Triple D did not appear to have any employees or provide other services.
In documents presented to a judge in 2016, the RCMP claimed Triple D was created in order to pay project firms money outside their respective contracts, “essentially paying themselves for services that have not been confirmed to have been rendered.”
The City of Winnipeg sued Adjeleian Allen Rubeli, GRC Architects, Caspian Construction and other firms in 2018, initially alleging deficiencies in the police headquarters construction. It sued Caspian and other firms again in 2020 for fraud related to the project.
Caspian and its fellow defendants settled that lawsuit in 2023 and must pay the city $23 million by March 24. If that deadline passes, the defendants must pay $28 million, according to the settlement.