Posted by Pension Info on 12/13/2005, 8:48 pm Scarponi needed the money to finance the purchase development land worth a little over a million dollars on which he planned to build houses in the Town of Richmond Hill, a prosperous community in the Greater Toronto Area. The mortgage would be funnelled to Scarponi through a CCWIPP investment corporation called I.F. Propco Holdings (Ontario) 10 Ltd. Cliff Evans, at that time the UFCW's Canadian Director and Chairman of CCWIPP's Investment Committee was also a Director of Propco 10. In exchange for the mortgage, Propco 10 would get a share of the profits from the subdivision and Evans would get a house for the low low price of $60,000.00. To seal the deal all Scarponi had to do was to sign a commitment letter and cough up a check for $9,730.00. All of this comes from court documents sworn by Evans and a couple of lawyers after the deal fell apart and Scarponi sued Propco 10, CCWIPP and its entire Board of Trustees for failing to come through with the cash. The case, called 876502 Ontario Ltd. v. I.F. Propco Holdings (Ontario) 10 Ltd., began in 1991 and ended in 1999. In 1994, Scarponi asked the court for a default judgement and the CCWIPP/Propco boys who it seems never bothered to file a Statement of Defence in the matter suddenly came to life. Numerous affidavits were filed as Evans and and his lawyers tried to persuade the court of what a bad guy Scarponi was. They said he had a history of failing to come through on similar commitments. They said he was prone to filing lawsuits. They accused him of perpetrating a scam and of screwing Evans out of the affordable home he'd promised to sell him. It was quite a hatchet job considering that all they really needed to say was, "He didn't come through with the downpayment so we didn't give him the mortgage your Honour." So intense was the CCWIPP assault on this real estate agent that it's easy to get lost in all the ink they spilled trying to convince the court that he was from hell. Scarponi denied the CCWIPP team's allegations about his character and his background and the judge eventually found them "scandalous", "embarrassing" and "irrelevant" and ordered Propco to pay Scarponi $1,000 for his trouble. Whatever kind of guy Paul Scarponi was, this isn't about him. It's about the boys from CCWIPP and how they go about the business of investing their members' funds. The extensive documentary record created by Scarponi's - much of it generated by the CCWIPP defence team - provides a rare opportunity to see how they operate and to hear about it in their own words. The following statements are taken from an Affidavit sworn by Vito Scalisi, a lawyer with the firm of Loopstra, Nixon and McLeish, who "worked extensively on [this] matter..." on behalf of CCWIPP. ...upon being cross-examined in this matter by solicitors for the Plaintiff, Clifford Evans testified he entered into an agreement with Mr. Scarponi pursuant to which he was to purchase one home in Mr. Scarponi's subdivision at a cost of $60,000.00. He further testified that he paid the sum of $60,000.00 to Mr. Scarponi and, in return, received three Agreements of Purchase and Sale showing deposits of $20,000.00 on each of three homes. Mr. Scarponi has sworn in an Affidavit filed in these proceedings that, in actuality, Mr. Evans was purchasing three home and that the Agreements of Purchase and Sale were legitimate.
69.159.28.22
Propco 10: Cliff Evans' Affordable Housing Misadventure
In 1990 the United Food and Commercial Workers Union's Canadian pension fund, CCWIPP, agreed to float a mortgage to a Toronto real estate agent named Paul Scarponi.
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