Former Ontario Finance Minister Greg Sorbara has won a major court victory in his long-running battle to clear his name.
An Ontario Superior Court judge has agreed to remove Mr. Sorbara's name from search warrants that had implicated him in a criminal probe into Royal Group Technologies Inc.
"I am relieved. I'm delighted and my faith in our justice system has once again been confirmed," Mr. Sorbara said at a news conference this afternoon. "I said all along a mistake had been made and the decision in that regard could not be clearer."
The decision clears Mr. Sorbara of any suspicion of alleged criminal wrongdoing and amounts to a damning indictment of the RCMP's case against him.
"Those portions of the search warrants granted on Oct. 5, 2005 that name [Mr. Sorbara]are severed and those portions are hereby quashed," Mr. Justice Ian Nordheimer says in a decision released today.
The decision could also pave the way for Mr. Sorbara's return to cabinet. Mr. Sorbara said any discussion of him returning to cabinet did not come up in a brief telephone conversation he had today with Premier Dalton McGuinty.
Mr. Sorbara said the Premier simply called to express his delight with the decision. He was forced to resign as finance minister last October when he was named in the warrants. Mr. McGuinty has said that if Mr. Sorbara succeeded in clearing his name in connection with the RCMP probe into Royal Group, he could return to cabinet.
His lawyers argued in court this month that the RCMP does not have enough evidence to implicate him in the Royal Group investigation. Judge Nordheimer agreed. "The search warrants ought not to have been granted naming [Mr. Sorbara]" he says in his 23-page decision.
Glenn Hainey, a lawyer for Mr. Sorbara, said the only allegation contained in thousands of pages of court documents is that his client failed to disclose a couple of real estate deals in the mid-1990s.
But Justice Department prosecutors argued that there is enough evidence against Mr. Sorbara to accuse him of fraud in connection with the real estate transactions.
Mr. Sorbara became swept up in the Royal Group scandal as a former director of the Woodbridge, Ont., building-products company and chairman of its audit committee. He resigned in 2003 when he was sworn into cabinet.
He is not the main focus of the probe, which centres on accusations of fraud against a group of former executives, including company founder Vic De Zen, all of whom deny the allegations.
But the RCMP had implicated Mr. Sorbara in the search warrants over two property deals in the mid-1990s between Royal Group and Sorbara Group, his family's private company.
The prosecutors alleged in court submission that there is evidence Mr. Sorbara was aware of these so-called related-party transactions and that he did not disclose them to the company's external auditors.
Judge Nordheimer has harsh words for the RCMP.
"In reviewing the contents of the information in this case, I am left with the nagging concern that the application for a search warrant, at least as it related to [Mr. Sorbara] was very much premature," he says. "Had more investigation been done and more questions been asked and answered, the situation regarding [Mr. Sorbara]would have become a great deal clearer than it was at the time the search warrant was sought.'
Karen Howlett