Well, it looks as though Wanda Liczyk is in trouble after all — the teeniest tiniest bit of trouble, if the charges levelled against her by the Institute of Chartered Accountants
of Ontario are to be the end of it for Toronto’s former treasurer.

Liczyk, one of the key players in the MFP computer leasing scandal that necessitated a full public inquiry, was formally charged today by the body overseeing her profession as a chartered accountant, in three areas — none of them, related to her behaviour surrounding the computer leasing deal that swelled from $43 million to $80.5 million without the knowledge of Toronto Council.

Rather, the institute has charged her in connection with the somewhat seamier, secondary matter of the related external contracts inquiry: her relationship with Michael Saunders, a married computer consultant who Liczyk hired, and hired again, to create first North York’s and then Toronto’s tax collection system. The charges indicate that Liczyk “knew or ought to have known” she was compromised in dealing with Saunders (when we say relationship, it was, of course, that kind of relationship). Also, that she signed those contracts without proper authority.

Well. All of this filled me with the kind of nostalgia that can only be quenched by going back through the many, many over-long stories I filed from the Bellamy Inquiry about Liczyk. Like this one, from the final day of Liczyk’s testimony on the MFP deal (it appeared November 22, 2002:

By DAVID NICKLE

Mirror Staff

Allegations that former MFP Financial Services saleperson Dash Domi deceived Toronto’s former treasurer Wanda Liczyk over the nature of computer leasing documents in 1999 is based entirely on Liczyk’s recollections, Toronto’s computer leasing inquiry heard last week.

Earlier in her testimony, Liczyk said that Domi personally brought her documents to sign that turned out to restructure the city’s computer lease agreement with MFP — but that he led her to believe they were simply administrative.

But under intense cross-examination from MFP lawyer David Moore, Liczyk admitted that she had failed to detail that alleged deception in three separate interviews with KPMG, a consulting firm engaged by the city to investigate the computer leasing deal in 2000.

And she didn’t document it at the time.

“There’s no e-mail… there’s nothing after the fact in which, internally, you recorded that by way of explanation that you may have overlooked,” said Moore. “There’s no piece of paper that makes any reference in any way, shape or form to that alleged statement, correct?”

Liczyk replied: “It’s based on my recollection… There is no document.”

Liczyk made the statement on her final day on the witness stand at Toronto’s Computer Leasing Inquiry.

The inquiry has been hearing evidence for the past year to determine how a computer leasing deal approved by Toronto Council at $43 million turned into a deal worth more than $80 million and costing the city more than $100 million.

Liczyk signed the document in July 2000 that extended five year leases for another 57 months — which added $2.5 million to the cost of the leases.

Liczyk has been under the commission’s microscope for the past two weeks. During her testimony, she admitted to having developed a “friendly” relationship with Domi, who invited her to hockey games and lunches and who she accompanied on a group trip to Ottawa to watch a hockey game. Liczyk testified that she paid for that trip, deeming it inappropriate. But on many other occasions, she testified that she felt that accepting invitations to social events from vendors was not inappropriate.

Yeah, it was complicated. Here’s another complicated one — the story I typed up after Madame Justice Denise Bellamy’s much better-written report on the inquiry, which came out in September of 2005 (the juicy Liczyk stuff is highlighted in bold):

By DAVID NICKLE

Mirror/Guardian Staff

Former councillor and one-time mayoral hopeful Tom Jakobek was a “calculating, strategic and almost habitual liar,” and likely accepted a $25,000 bribe from MFP salesman Dash Domi in late 1999.

Ex-city treasurer Wanda Liczyk let her heart compromise her integrity when helping a former lover maintain a lucrative contract to design the city’s tax collection system.

And while city staff seem to have learned from their mistakes over the years, Toronto Council is not doing much better now than it was shortly after amalgamation.

All that just scratches the surface of Madame Justice Denise Bellamy’s explosive, caustic and comprehensive report from the city’s four-year, $19.2 million public inquiry into Toronto’s mishandling of the MFP computer lease and various other external contracts.

The contract with MFP to lease 15,000 desktop computers swelled from $43 million to more than $80 million without council’s knowledge or approval. The inquiries were also looking into a contract with a U.S. software consultant to write and implement a tax collection system for first North York and then Toronto; deals to lease other software through MFP; and the political and lobbying machinations around various other concerns, including Ball Hsu, an information technology consultant who has disappeared in China before he could testify.

Over the course of its 214 hearing days at the East York Civic Centre, the story that emerged was sensational enough - filled with sex, bribes, night-flights to Philadelphia and clandestine meetings in underground garages.

But on Monday, in a document that reads as much like a political thriller as it does a public inquiry report, Bellamy pulled it all together - connecting dots on key elements of testimony and pulling no punches as she did so.

Early in the report, for instance, she identified Tom Jakobek as having “lied and lied and lied and lied and lied,” when he told reporters he had not gone on a flight to Philadelphia May 2 - a flight on a private jet that had been booked by Dash Domi. Toward the end, she concludes that Jakobek accepted a $25,000 bribe from Domi, passed along in a brief meeting in Toronto City Hall’s parking garage.

Stories on that transaction shifted over the course of the inquiry. At first, Jakobek attempted to esape testifying through a court appeal. When that failed, he swore an affidavit maintainingthat his father-in-law Ken Morrish, now laid low by a stroke, had given him the money.

When the inquiry managed to locate American Express records indicating that was not so, Jakobek finally brought his family onto the stand, to advance a complicated explanation as to how a total of $24,400 found its way onto his American Express Card - at one point engaging his mother Ursula and brother Joe’s testimony to explain that the money came as gifts.

Domi, meanwhile, maintained that he had gotten the money out of his account to pay his brother, hockey star Tie Domi, for a loan he’d given him earlier in his career.

Wrote Bellamy: “Dash Domi and Tom Jakobek lied in concert about the Philadelphia trip to conceal their association. They both lied about the movement of the mysterious money. Whether acting in concert or independently, the consistency of their lies gives credence to the theory that Dash Domi made, and Tom Jakobek accepted, an improper payment of $25,000. In the end, thre are two questions: is there enough credible evidence to conclude that Dash Domi gave Tom Jakobek a payoff? Yes, there is. Has either of them provided any believable evidence to contradict that conclusion? No, they have not.”

Domi did not return calls. But in a brief interview, Jakobek’s lawyer Alan Gold said that he and Jakobek were “disappointed” with the findings.

“Even the best judges are wrong at the best of times - we’ll go through the report carefully considering our legal options. Our position is that the report is wrong and any suggestion that Mr. Jakobek has received any illegal monies is false,” he said. “We feel that Justice Bellamy is wrong in her approach to this.”

Bellamny also found that Wanda Liczyk, who was instrumental in both the MFP deal and the TMACS tax collection software deal, had compromised her objectivity in her romantic relationship with Michael Saunders - the system’s author. And she found that Liczyk had done so again in establishing a friendship with Domi that included late night telephone calls and referrals to hairstylists by the former hair dresser.

“While there is no evidence the relationship was sexual, there is no doubt that she failed to maintain the professional boundaries and distance one would expect of the CFO of the largest city in the country,” wrote Bellamy. “As she had done before with Mr. Saunders, Wanda Liczyk walked into a conflict of interest with her eyes wide open.”

Bellamy pinned much responsibility for the failure of the MFP contract on Liczyk - who signed off on the report that went to the Policy and Finance Committee, and along with an amendment from Tom Jakobek,

Liczyk was not the only senior staff person to take heat. Jim Andrew, the former director of Information Technology for the city who she said acted as a “mole” for lobbyist Jeff Lyons and also assisted Domi - in return for at-times lavish gifts.

“Attentiveness and friendship had worked on Wanda Liczyk, but Dash Domi had a different tactic for Jim Andrew: the trough. It overflowed with hockey tickets, basketball tickets, golf games, lunches and dinners - and it worked,” wrote Bellamy. “The message he sent by accepting all of this corporate entertainment is clear and troubling: Jim Andrew, a public servant, was for sale.”

And Bellamy had harsh words for Toronto’s current crop of councillors, who, she said, have as recently as this year attempted to justify taking benefits from contractors trying to woo city business - all the while maintaining an ugly lack of decorum on the floor of council, verbally abusing one another and city staff alike.

“On the first day of the first hearings, then-Mayor Mel Lastman said that councillors were ‘out to kill each other, out to embarrass one another.’ Nearly eight years later, some councillors are still hurling vulgar insults in the Council Chamber. There appears to be no progress at all.”

And on the ethical front, she had simliarly harsh words.

“In early 2005, councillors were invited for drinks, dinner and a sports event in a suite at the Air Canada Centre, paid for by an industry associaiton,” she wrote. ” At the inquiry, lavish entertainment accepted by public officials had just been exposed as deplorable, and had ruined reputations and perhaps careers. Yet in the inquiry’s last days, some councillors defended the entertainment, as if the inquiry had not happened. Councillors should not compromise their independence in the eyes of the public. They should not look as though they are open to persuasion in this way.”

Liczyk’s lawyer William Anderson did not return calls.

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Ah, but I can’t do that report justice. If you’ve got a few hours (and promise to come back to our website) you may want to check out the full report here. Just to get a full picture of what it takes to be charged three times by the Ontario Institute of Chartered Accountants.

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