Tausi Insider

Gary Ng at the Fairmont, in Winnipeg, on Nov. 28, 2018. Mikaela MacKenzie/Handout Gary Ng, the Winnipeg-based entrepreneur who was briefly a force in Canada’s wealth-management sector, had less than $500,000 in his personal accounts when he borrowed more than $240-million to fund a series of investment dealer acquisitions, new court documents allege. Between 2018 and 2020, Mr. Ng borrowed nearly a quarter of a billion dollars from some of North America’s most sophisticated lenders – loans he secured with falsified account statements showing he was worth closer to $90-million, the RCMP have alleged in court filings. The allegations about the true state of Mr. Ng’s modest net worth highlight the disconnect between the reality of his personal holdings, and the proclamations he made a few years ago about his ambitions to consolidate the Canadian wealth-management sector. The documents, which were filed in support of several judicial orders for the production of records, had been barred f...

Former OPSEU boss Warren 'Smokey' Thomas speaks to reporters at Queens Park in Toronto in a file photo on Jan. 21, 2019. Chris Young/The Canadian Press The former president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union — Warren ‘Smokey’ Thomas — has called the recent allegations of financial improprieties made against him by the union “bogus” and is vowing to defend them. Mr. Thomas released a statement on Tuesday afternoon, just a day after OPSEU filed a lawsuit accusing him and two other former union executives of improperly using millions of dollars in cash and assets for personal enrichment. The statement, issued by Mr. Thomas’s lawyers, said that the lawsuit was riddled with “errors, falsehoods and untrue allegations.” “Mr. Thomas rejects the claims against him and intends to defend his good name,” the statement read. The union alleges that Mr. Thomas, who served as president of OPSEU for 15 years before retiring from the union last April, along with Eduardo Almeida, the...