Category: Corruption

British lawyer jailed four and a half years for fabricating evidence. Three corrupt Canadian Bay Street lawyers get pass for same crime.

Same crime – different outcomes for corrupt lawyers in England and Canada.

Jailed lawyer Diljit Bachada

British solicitor Diljit Bachada fabricated evidence and placed false documents before the court in a civil dispute. She was caught when it was found that her documents contained a copyright notice that didn’t come into existence until six months after the date of the forged documents. (Law Society Gazette: Solicitor jailed for falsifying legal documents)

As a result, Bachada will spend the next four and a half years as a guest of Her Majesty’s Prisons. A second solicitor, Tharinjit Biring, assisted by providing a false witness statement and will spend eighteen months in prison.

In Canada though, Ontario’s Law Society of Upper Canada covered up and whitewashed hundreds of crimes by lawyers who committed criminal offences against their clients – according to the Toronto Star’s Broken Trust investigation.

In my own case, three corrupt Bay Street lawyers fabricated evidence and committed other criminal offences – yet the Law Society of Upper Canada, the legal profession and the courts gave them a pass.

The Law Society of Upper Canada is an exclusive club, and once you’re in it the rule of law doesn’t always apply. It just wouldn’t do to send senior members of the club to jail – even if an innocent man must go to prison instead.

Corrupt Ontario lawyers Sebastien Kwidzinski, Gerald Ranking & Lorne Silver lied to the courts.

The three corrupt Bay Street lawyers in my case are:

On November 17, 2009, Ranking, Silver and Kwidzinski crafted a false ‘Statement for the Record’ of a telephone call they had with me, Donald Best. They falsely told a judge in writing and then orally in court that I had informed them during the call that I did receive a certain court order. In fact I had told them many times that I had not received the court order and they cross-examined me on this point.

The corrupt lawyers did not know that I was in Asia and had secretly recorded the phone call which proved they lied to me in the call and to the judge. Further, later evidence showed that Ranking and his secretary lied to the court about sending me the court order via courier.

Further, Ranking and Kwidzinski’s purported ‘Barbados registered’ client was in fact a phony, non-entity which had been fraudulently created for the purpose of deflecting liability from their real client. Ranking was of course never able to present registration documents for his phony client. In January 2013 he was again caught red-handed filing fraudulent documents intended to legitimize his non-existent client some three years after the case had ended.

Then there is the fact that Gerald Ranking and Fasken Martineau law firm received over a million dollars in settlement and court costs which could not have been transferred to their non-existent client. That, my friends, is a badge of fraud and money-laundering.

Oh… and did I mention that Ranking and Kwidzinski illegally hired a corrupt Ontario Provincial Police officer to perform an illegal investigation for them? It’s called bribery of a peace officer under the Criminal Code of Canada.

Yes, the Law Society of Upper Canada and the courts were and are well aware of all of this – but the Bay Street lawyers are members of The Club, and rule of law doesn’t apply to them.

Notice to readers, including Persons and Entities mentoned in this article

As always, if anyone disagrees with anything published at DonaldBest.CA or wishes to provide a public response or comment, please contact me at [email protected] and I will publish your writing with equal prominence. Comments left on articles are moderated at least once a day. Or, of course, you can sue me and serve my lawyer Paul Slansky. You can find Mr. Slansky’s information here.

Photos have been included to put context to the article. Their use is the same as with other Canadian news outlets.

Donald Best
Barrie, Ontario, Canada

* Thanks to a loyal reader who informed me of the jailed British lawyers.

 

What Bill Browder didn’t know about Paul Schabas and Canada’s corrupt Bay Street lawyers

 

Cowardice and lack of Integrity at Ontario’s Law Society.

LSUC Treasurer Paul Schabas

Last week at the Cambridge Lectures, Hermitage Capital CEO and author Bill Browder spoke to a capacity crowd of top legal minds including Canada’s Chief Justice, the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin.

But while Browder kept the audience on the edge of their seats with true stories of corruption and murder in Putin’s Russia, he didn’t know that the moderator beside him – the leader of Ontario’s Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC), Paul Schabas – continues to whitewash corruption and criminal acts by members of Ontario’s Bay Street legal cabal.

Without courage, integrity means little

Bill Browder was client and friend of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky; an honest and courageous law firm auditor who was falsely arrested after he exposed a corrupt scheme to steal hundreds of millions of dollars in Russian tax revenues. When Sergei refused to cower and retract his evidence, he was held without charges for almost a year, tortured and finally beaten to death in solitary confinement by Putin’s thugs.

Browder documented that story of the corrupt Russian justice system in his best-selling book Red Notice. His lobbying brought forth the USA’s Magnitsky Act that authorizes sanctions against the involved Russians, including the crooked police and justice officials who are servants in the architecture of corruption.

Now Browder and his family are also paying the price that comes from courageously standing against corruption. They are targets of death threats, surveillance operations, kidnapping plots and a well-financed media smear-campaign against Browder and his murdered lawyer.

“Bill Browder did not know that the moderator who introduced him, Paul Schabas, doesn’t have the integrity or courage to hold corrupt Bay Street lawyers accountable. By his continued silence, Paul Schabas facilitates corruption and protects rogue members of Ontario’s legal elites.”

Bill Browder with photo of his murdered lawyer Sergei Magnitsky*

Canadians don’t have to go to Russia to find corruption

Threats to rape and murder witnesses (1,2), falsifying evidence (3,4,11), lawyers bribing police (5,6,7), putting an innocent man in prison (3,4,11), and protecting the elites against charges of money-laundering (8,9,10) and other crimes doesn’t just happen in Russia: it happens in Canada as well.

And nobody knows that better than Toronto lawyer Paul Schabas, the current Treasurer of Ontario’s Law Society of Upper Canada.

In his capacity as a lawyer, as a law society bencher and finally as LSUC Treasurer, Schabas knew of and received every piece of evidence in the Nelson Barbados and Donald Best civil cases where three corrupt Bay Street lawyers (Lorne Silver, Gerald Ranking and Sebastien Kwidzinski) were caught red-handed fabricating evidence and lying to the court to imprison an innocent man.

Paul Schabas also was aware of the hundreds of anonymous internet threats against witnesses in the Nelson Barbados case – including threats to rape and murder the victims of a massive US$100 million dollar fraud. Schabas and his law society received solid forensic evidence that many of the anonymous internet threats against witnesses originated from the computer network at Toronto’s Miller Thomson LLP law firm. (1,2)

Schabas and the Law Society of Upper Canada ignored anonymous threats against witnesses proven to be emanating from Bay Street law firm Miller Thomson LLP

Paul Schabas and his law society also knew that lawyer Gerald Ranking of Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP’s Toronto office fraudulently claimed that his purported client was a registered Barbados business – when in fact the ‘company’ was a phony non-entity conjured up to deflect liability from Ranking’s actual clients. Schabas and the law society also knew that Ranking received over a million dollars court costs payments in the name of the phony ‘company’ that Ranking knew didn’t really exist – a badge of money laundering. (8,9,10)

Paul Schabas and the law society knew that lawyers Sebastien Kwidzinski and Gerald Ranking illegally paid a corrupt Ontario Provincial Police detective sergeant, James ‘Jim’ Van Allen, to work for them illegally on the side as an unlicensed private investigator, using police resources to gather evidence for their clients in a private civil case. (5,6,7)

Senior Ontario lawyers Gerald Ranking (center), Lorne Silver (right) and junior Sebastien Kwidzinski (left) lied to the courts.

Paul Schabas and the Law Society of Upper Canada ignored, whitewashed and covered up the entire mess to save three corrupt Bay Street lawyers: Lorne Silver, Gerald Ranking and Sebastien Kwidzinski.

And that was only the Nelson Barbados and Donald Best Ontario civil case.

As the Toronto Star newspaper’s Broken Trust series revealed, in the last few years the Law Society of Upper Canada also covered up several hundred other cases where Ontario lawyers committed criminal offences. (12,13)

At the Cambridge Lectures when Bill Browder gave his talk on corruption in Russia, he did not know that the moderator who introduced him, Paul Schabas, lacks the integrity and courage to hold corrupt Bay Street lawyers accountable. By his continued silence, Paul Schabas facilitates corruption and protects rogue members of Ontario’s legal elites.

“I will leave it to my readers to make what they will of the fact that in all these years, none of the people I name has sued me or asked the court for an injunction to remove my evidence and writings, or to curtail my future statements.”

Supporting Evidence for Statements of Fact

by Donald Best, former Sergeant, Detective, Toronto Police

For three years I, Donald Best, have published court documents and exhibits (including voice recordings and forensic reports) that detail my ten year journey through Ontario’s civil courts and prove criminal and/or other serious wrongdoing by senior Ontario lawyers, police personnel and at least one judge.

The corrupt senior lawyers and those in the legal profession who protected them made sure that no jury of my peers would ever be able to consider this evidence in a court. They were successful in preventing my civil case from reaching trial because the legal profession and the Canadian justice system closed ranks and did everything possible to protect these senior lawyers who are members of a very exclusive club.

Nonetheless, for three years I’ve told my story here and at other venues, including in the Globe and Mail newspaper and at the University of Windsor Law Faculty’s National Self-Represented Litigants Project.

For three years I’ve publicly named certain senior lawyers and police officers – called them “corrupt”, and published evidence of their criminal acts and other wrong-doing. I have published the name of an Ontario Superior Court judge and provided evidence of his actions that several senior lawyers and a retired Crown Attorney call “despotic”, “disgusting”, “reprehensible”, “malicious” and “worthy of his removal from the bench.”(14)

I will leave it to my readers to make what they will of the fact that in all these years, none of the people I name has sued me or asked the court for an injunction to remove my evidence and writings, or to curtail my future statements. Read more

Federal Court to review whitewashed Canadian Judicial Council decision about Justice Bryan Shaughnessy on November 20, 2017

Justice Bryan Shaughnessy (r) & his lawyer, Peter Wardle

Canadian Judicial Council cover-up exposed on November 20, 2017

The Federal Court of Canada has scheduled two full days on November 20 & 21, 2017 to review a Canadian Judicial Council (‘CJC’) decision about a complaint against Ontario Superior Court Justice J. Bryan Shaughnessy.

The hearing will review how and why CJC Director Norman Sabourin summarily dismissed a complaint by former Toronto Police Sergeant (Detective) Donald Best, without an investigation and in the face of irrefutable evidence that Justice Shaughnessy committed what has been described by various lawyers and a retired Crown prosecutor as ‘despotic, disgusting and reprehensible misconduct’.

“In all my years of practicing law, this is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen a judge do.” 

Senior Ontario lawyer writes to Donald Best after examining the evidence against Justice J. Bryan Shaughnessy.

Donald Best alleged that after sentencing him to three months in prison for Contempt of Civil Court, Ontario Superior Court Judge J. Bryan Shaughnessy went to a back room after court ended, and – off the court record – illegally made a secret new court order increasing the Best’s sentence by a month, without telling the self-represented prisoner and without placing the new secret order into the court record. This was a deliberate, vindictive and premeditated extra-judicial abuse of Justice Shaughnessy’s position and authority.

Several senior lawyers and a retired Crown Attorney call Justice Shaughnessy’s behaviour “despotic”, “disgusting”, “reprehensible”, “malicious” and “worthy of his removal from the bench.”

Canadian Judicial Council said to be operating ultra vires – in violation of the law.

As well as looking at the circumstances of the CJC dismissal of Best’s complaint, the Federal Court will be considering whether or not CJC Director Norman Sabourin is operating beyond his authority under the laws which established the CJC. This issue has been previously raised in public discussions, but has never been formally brought before the court as it is in the Judicial Review filed by Donald Best’s lawyer, Paul Slansky.

Packed Courtroom Expected

Many Canadians wrote expressing support for Donald Best and asked to be notified of the hearing date so they can attend and observe the process. A court artist and several independent journalists also state they will cover the hearing.

The hearing will be held:

Monday November 20th and Tuesday November 21, 2017 at 9:30am

Federal Court: 180 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario.

About The Public Trust – Statement by Donald Best

by Donald Best, former Sergeant, Detective, Toronto Police

I believe that the vast majority of judges and lawyers do their utmost to deliver the best justice they can within our imperfect system. There are, of course, systemic problems that need attention – but when a lawyer or a judge goes rogue, Canada’s legal profession must take action or the entire justice system is tainted.

Justice Shaughnessy’s reprehensible backroom misconduct is egregious but, fortunately, exceedingly rare – so rare that no one I’ve spoken with has ever heard of any other judge doing what Justice Shaughnessy did.

The evidence of his misconduct is so strong that when the Canadian Judicial Council dismissed my complaint without an investigation it really was a self-indictment of the CJC, its director Norman Sabourin, and the CJC’s processes and decisions. Within the legal community, the CJC’s decision to dismiss my complaint produced disdain and contempt for the CJC – not to mention guffaws and comments of “If this isn’t judicial misconduct, then nothing is.”

It is hoped that a Judicial Review of the CJC’s Shaughnessy decision will provide Canadians with answers about how this happened and result in changes that could begin to restore confidence in our judicial system and in the Canadian Judicial Council that is mandated to bring accountability to those we Canadians entrust as judges.   Read more

Will Canada Revenue Agency investigate lawyer’s transfer of 1 million to a phoney client?

Will Canada Revenue Agency take on Big Law?

by Donald Best, former Sergeant, Detective, Toronto Police

Canada Revenue Agency (‘CRA’) recently announced that it has launched dozens of investigations into offshore monies that surfaced in the Panama Papers leak. (Toronto Star news article here)

The agency says it has “upped its game” in going after the money-laundering, tax-fraud crowd with a half-a-billion dollar budget increase aimed squarely at funding such investigations.

I wonder if the CRA will shy away from investigating big Bay Street law firms – given that everybody knows that without corrupt lawyers and accountants, tax-fraud and money-laundering would be severely obstructed for most of the offshore monied class.

Considering that a recent Global Witness ‘cold-call’ undercover investigation showed that fully 25% of big city lawyers are willing to money-launder, we can safely assume that a much higher percentage of lawyers would do the dirty deed for their known and trusted client base.

Unless the Canada Revenue Agency is willing to take on Big Law, their investigations will only yield low hanging fruit – little guys.

So in the spirit of Canadians cooperating with the Canada Revenue Agency to lower all our tax pressures, I offer the following set of circumstances that can easily be proven through documents already filed as evidence before the courts. CRA investigators and my readers shouldn’t believe anything I say though… they should examine the evidence and make up their own minds.

Money laundering question: Where did the million dollars go?

Big Law Firm lawyers Gerald Ranking – Lorne Silver knew Ranking’s purported client did not exist.

Toronto lawyer Gerald Ranking and his Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP law firm were paid over a million dollars in court costs during the Nelson Barbados Group vs Cox civil lawsuit – in trust for their purported client, ‘PricewaterhouseCoopers East Caribbean Firm’.

Only one little problem: Gerald Ranking, Faskens and co-counsel Lorne Silver knew that the Ranking’s client was a phoney non-entity that does not, and did not, exist at any time.

The use of a fraudulent, non-existant business entity for financial transactions is a recognized badge of fraud and money-laundering.

While Gerald Ranking’s use of a phoney client and non-existent business entity offered his real clients some measure of protection if the civil suit was lost, it created problems when the court ordered payments to the phoney non-existent business. By definition, a phoney non-existent business cannot have a bank account.

During the Nelson Barbados Group Ltd. civil case, about a million dollars in costs was paid to Faskens and Ranking in trust for their fraudulent non-existent ‘client’. So where did Faskens and Ranking transfer the money received ‘in trust’ for their phoney client?

The one thing we do know about where the money went is that it was never deposited into any bank account in the name ‘PricewaterhouseCoopers East Caribbean Firm’ as the court ordered.

How did Fasken and Ranking work around the currency laws of Barbados, applicable income tax laws and other legal problems that must have arisen when transferring a million dollars the court ordered paid to a non-existent, phoney, fraudulent non-entity?

That, as they say, is an excellent question that is certainly worthy of consideration by the courts, Canada Revenue Agency, the Law Society of Upper Canada and by ordinary Canadians.

Here’s where CRA and my readers can find the sworn and filed court evidence to investigate and decide this matter for themselves:

September 17, 2015 – Why did Fasken Martineau lawyer Gerald Ranking not submit costs to the Supreme Court of Canada?

September 20, 2014 – Lawsuit Claim: Faskens lawyer Gerald Ranking knowingly represented a phoney business entity, lied to the Supreme Court of Canada.

March 27, 2016 – Anonymous Companies: Global Witness undercover investigation shows 25% of lawyers will money launder.

Let me make it quite clear: Lawyer Gerald Ranking of the large Canadian law firm Fasken Martineau DuMoulin, knowingly lied to the Superior Court of Ontario, the Appeal Court of Ontario and to the Supreme Court of Canada. Starting in 2007, Ranking falsely claimed that his purported client ‘Pricewaterhouse Coopers East Caribbean Firm’ was a business legitimately registered with the Government of Barbados. That was a lie in 2007, and it continues to be a lie.

Ranking and his witness maintained that lie for years, even in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary. In January of 2013, Ranking even sought to reinforce the lie by fraudulently reading into the court record deliberately false renditions of Barbados government records. The evidence to support all this is filed with the courts, and is available here at DonaldBest.ca.

Fasken Martineau DuMoulin lawyer Gerald Ranking is a liar. His actions were unethical and illegal. He lied to the Supreme Court of Canada.

 

Further… there is the question of the million dollars paid into Ranking’s trust account for a non-existent, fraudulent client that could not have possibly had a bank account.

And the money ended up where?

Clear enough? Good!

 

When will judges speak out against perjury? Don’t make me laugh!

“Sometimes the truth just doesn’t matter to the courts when high status persons are in jeopardy.”

Georgialee Lang

I was happy to discover Lawdiva’s Blog by Vancouver lawyer Georgialee Lang – who posts some excellent articles about the legal system and treads where many others fear to go.

She also writes marvellous headlines such as “Judge Presides Over Child Support Hearing While Conducting an Affair with Litigant”.

Recently Georgialee asked When Will Our Judges Speak Out Forcefully Against Perjury?

I left this comment on her article:

Hello Ms. Lang,

I’ve enjoyed a few of your articles today after stumbling across your website a few clicks ago. (Can’t even remember where or how I got here – the wonders of the internet.)

In my 40 years in and around the court as a police detective and as a private investigator, I concur that there has always been a great reluctance to prosecute people for perjury. Even if the evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable with no reasonable doubt, perjury charges just never seem to follow.

In my own case before the Ontario Superior Court, even a forensically proven and secretly made voice recording that conclusively proved perjury wasn’t enough. Indeed, no court ever agreed to listen to the recording lest the judge would then have to find perjury and conspiracy against three witnesses.

And the three witnesses who perjured themselves just happened to be… lawyers.

Sometimes the truth just doesn’t matter to the courts when high status persons are in jeopardy.

The Sebastien Kwidzinski story: How senior partners taught a young articling lawyer to fabricate evidence and lie to the court.

Donald Best

 

Ontario’s Bay Street Cabal and law society circle the wagons to protect judge; Ignoring conflicts of interest and the public trust – #2 in a Series

Law Society of Upper Canada sides with Judge over misconduct some lawyers call “disgusting”, “reprehensible”, “worthy of removal from the bench.”

Surrounded by Law Society Benchers, newly elected Treasurer, Paul B. Schabas (centre), chairs his first meeting.

Our first article in this series exposed how Ontario Superior Court Justice J. Bryan Shaughnessy hired a conflicted lawyer to represent him in an ongoing Judicial Review of a Canadian Judicial Council decision about Justice Shaughnessy.*

Law Society of Upper Canada senior bencher Peter C. Wardle is Justice Shaughnessy’s new attorney. However, in a closely related matter Wardle also represented two lawyers who are almost certain to be called as primary witnesses in a CJC investigation or public inquiry into allegations of serious misconduct against Justice Shaughnessy.**

Of the over 50,000 licensed lawyers in Ontario, Justice Shaughnessy just happens to be represented by Mr. Wardle – the only lawyer in Canada who:

  1. represented two important witnesses to the judge’s misconduct in a closely associated legal matter, and,
  2. represented eleven high profile law firms and lawyers (including the current Treasurer of the law society) in the same closely related matter, and,
  3. is a senior bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada (‘LSUC’) – the regulator of all lawyers and paralegals in the province that has been extensively involved in this very series of legal actions, and,
  4. works closely with LawPRO, the law society’s company insuring lawyers in Ontario that is also involved in legal matters closely associated with the current Judicial Review.

Senior bencher Peter Wardle represented lawyers Gerald Ranking and Lorne Silver during a civil law suit launched in July, 2014 by former Toronto Police Sergeant (Detective) Donald Best. Wardle represented a total of 11 lawyers and law firms in that lawsuit, including some of Canada’s largest Bay Street law firms. (Best was forced to discontinue that lawsuit in 2015 when he could not pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in court costs previously awarded against him on the basis of false testimony by Ranking and Silver.***)

The Law Society of Upper Canada and its insurance company LawPRO have been following this series of actions in the courts since at least 2009, and became even more involved in 2014 when Donald Best sued lawyers Gerald Ranking, Lorne Silver, bencher Paul Schabas and other people and entities who acted in the civil lawsuit that saw Best maliciously convicted of contempt of court and sentenced to prison upon provably fabricated and false evidence.

Paul Schabas

Today, Paul Schabas is law society’s highest elected official, the Treasurer. Schabas and his Blakes law firm appeared extensively before Justice Shaughnessy on the Best legal cases and acted in concert with lawyers Ranking and Silver during many motions and submissions against Best and his company.

As a senior bencher, Peter C. Wardle is an elite on the inside of the law society. He regularly acts for the law society’s LawPRO lawyer insurance arm and probably did so during Donald Best’s civil lawsuit against Ranking, Silver and Schabas. He serves on internal committees and often works directly with Treasurer Paul Schabas.

Wardle undoubtedly gained privileged, insider information about the case and about Justice Shaughnessy’s actions during the case, from his clients Ranking, Silver and Schabas. Wardle also likely gained similar insider information about the case that he obtained formally or informally as a direct result of his position as senior bencher and/or his relationship working with LawPRO.

Many persons find this arrangement and the relationship between the Law Society of Upper Canada, LSUC senior management, LawPRO insurance, Bay Street law firms and Justice Shaughnessy, to be all too cozy.

Who is looking after the public trust and the broader interests of lawyers in Ontario in this Judicial Review of the Canadian Judicial Council? With these potential and real conflicts of interest, both ordinary citizens and lawyers I’ve spoken with have little confidence that the Law Society of Upper Canada is doing anything other than circling the wagons to protect a judge facing strong – even irrefutable – evidence of serious misconduct.

The question is asked by many:

Are the law society’s actions in this judicial review being driven by the broad public and professional interests… or, are the law society’s actions more closely aligned with the personal agendas of the involved LSUC senior leadership and Bay Street law firms?

Big Law Firm lawyers Gerald Ranking (left), Lorne Silver & Justice J. Bryan Shaughnessy

Lawyers Gerald Ranking and Lorne Silver are witnesses to Justice Shaughnessy’s serious misconduct

Gerald Ranking and Lorne Silver are connected to Justice Shaughnessy’s misconduct through a series of civil court actions involving Donald Best, and due to their presence with Justice Shaughnessy on May 3, 2013 during at least some parts of the judicial misconduct.

The lawyers were also involved in a previous incident during the same civil case where Justice Shaughnessy backdated a court order for them on November 12, 2009 – backdated ten days to November 2, 2009.****

Here is a basic summary of what lawyers Ranking and Silver witnessed and may have witnessed during Justice Shaughnessy’s misconduct on May 3, 2013:

  • On May 3, 2013, both Ranking and Silver were present in court and witnessed Justice Shaughnessy declare (on the transcript) that he would not set aside his January 15, 2010 conviction of self-represented litigant Donald Best for contempt of court. Justice Shaughnessy ordered that the stay on his original January 15, 2010 warrant for the arrest and imprisonment of Donald Best would now be lifted, and that Best would be taken to prison to serve his 3 month sentence according to Justice Shaughnessy’s January 15, 2010 warrant of committal and court order.
  • Ranking and Silver also witnessed Justice Shaughnessy order that Best was not to have input into any court order to be made on that day May 3rd 2013 and that Ranking and Silver would prepare an order for Justice Shaughnessy.
  • Ranking and Silver also witnessed the judge order that Donald Best was never again to be brought before him, and that some other judge must deal with Best in the future.
  • Ranking and Silver witnessed that court ended, the judge left and then the court staff packed up and left. Court Police allowed Donald Best 10 minutes to pack up, after which he was taken in handcuffs to the basement cells and then to prison.
  • After court had finished on May 3, 2013 and Donald Best had been taken away to serve his three-month sentence, Justice Shaughnessy went to a backroom and secretly signed a new and secret warrant of committal that increased the Best’s prison time by a month. Justice Shaughnessy did this off the court record, out of court, without telling the self-represented prisoner and without placing the new warrant of committal or any mention of it or the increased sentence into the court record. This was all contrary to the sentence and order the judge himself delivered earlier in court on the record.
  • The judge gave the only copy of the new warrant to prison authorities after ordering that Best was not to have knowledge of the creation of the court order.
  • As secretly planned and arranged by Justice Shaughnessy, Best only discovered the increased sentence when informed by authorities at the prison.

The above shows that lawyers Ranking and Silver are, at the very least, important witnesses to parts of Justice Shaughnessy’s misconduct on May 3, 2013 – raising questions about conflicts of interest now that Peter C. Wardle is representing Justice Shaughnessy.

Complicating the conflicts of interest even further, lawyers Gerald Ranking and Lorne Silver may not be just witnesses. Court transcripts indicate it is also possible that these lawyers assisted Justice Shaughnessy in carrying out his judicial misconduct.

Details on the Gerald Ranking and Lorne Silver story are coming next week.

New Series: Abandoning Public Trust: Conflicts of Interest by Ontario’s legal profession

The series…

Part 1: Justice Bryan Shaughnessy chooses conflicted lawyer as personal counsel in Judicial Review.

Part 2: Ontario’s Bay Street Cabal and law society circle the wagons to protect judge; Ignoring conflicts of interest and the public trust.

Part 3: Did Lawyers Ranking and Silver know of Justice Shaughnessy’s intentions and actions? Did they assist in his judicial misconduct?

Part 4: Should conflicted lawyer Peter C. Wardle resign from representing Justice J. Bryan Shaughnessy?

Part 5: Abandoning the Public Interest. When Canada’s legal profession circles the wagons to save club members, who looks after the interests of Canadians?

Part 6: Previous incident – How Justice Shaughnessy backdated a court order for lawyers Gerald Ranking and Lorne Silver.

… Additional articles in this series will be added later.

Notes

*  Justice Bryan Shaughnessy chooses conflicted lawyer as personal counsel in Judicial Review.

**  Federal Court refuses to release judge from Judicial Review of Misconduct Complaint

*** Best secretly and legally recorded phone call with lying lawyers Gerald Ranking and Lorne Silver

**** Details and court exhibits coming in Part 6 – Previous incident – How Justice Shaughnessy backdated a court order for lawyers Gerald Ranking and Lorne Silver.

 

Fasken Martineau DuMoulin staff read about misconduct by Toronto lawyer Gerald Ranking

Today we welcome (again) personnel from Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP’s Toronto law office who dropped by my website at 11:20:21 GMT after following a link from my @DonaldBestCA Twitter account.

It is great to have you guys and gals at Faskens following my Twitter account and reading the stories here at DonaldBest.CA. You’ve visited hundreds of times in the last few years.

Faskens lawyer Gerald L Ranking

Today you read evidence of how your senior partner and colleague Gerald L. Ranking didn’t submit a claim for costs to the Supreme Court of Canada – because Gerry and the senior managing partners at Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP knew that their purported client, ‘PricewaterhouseCoopers East Caribbean Firm’ does not, and did not, exist at any time.

Ranking and Faskens did not want to double-down on their fraud upon the Supreme Court of Canada and have the SCC issue another cost order to what the lawyers know is a false, phoney, criminally fraudulent, non-existent ‘client’.

That’s all laid out in the articles that Faskens staff read today, including Why did Fasken Martineau lawyer Gerald Ranking not submit costs to the Supreme Court of Canada?

But hey… if you bump into your colleague in the hallowed halls of your Bay Street tower, you might want to consider (or not) asking Gerald Ranking this one question about money-laundering:

During the Nelson Barbados Group Ltd. civil case, about a million dollars in costs was paid to Faskens and Ranking in trust for their fraudulent non-existent ‘client’. So where did Faskens and Ranking transfer the money received ‘in trust’ for their phoney client?

The one thing we do know about where the money went is that it was never deposited into any bank account in the name ‘PricewaterhouseCoopers East Caribbean Firm’ as the court ordered.

Fasken’s and Ranking’s client doesn’t exist, never existed – and they know it. The use of a phony non-existent entity for court and monetary transactions is a recognized badge of fraud and money-laundering.

So where did the million dollars end up?

Will the Law Society of Upper Canada audit the financial transactions of one of the big Bay Street Boys Club law firms? Not a chance, my friends.

Not. A. Chance.

by Donald Best in Ontario, Canada

 

National Post bans Donald Best comment on article about Donald Best and lawyer Paul Slansky

by Donald Best, former Sergeant, Detective, Toronto Police

Canada’s National Post newspaper ‘stealth banned’* comments by yours truly, Donald Best, on a newspaper article about my lawyer Paul Slansky, my legal case and me.

When I’m logged in as a registered reader I can read my own comments – but I’m not told that my comments are not visible to other readers, only to me.

The National Post published the same flawed Colin Perkel article as did the Toronto Star, which contains such deliberately limited information that it can only be called fake news. After Perkel’s first such article about my case in June 2016, he refused to interview me despite my offers. My recent post explains it all.

My comment at the National Post was polite and informative – but the editors apparently have marching orders from their masters. The news article names me, is about my case and my lawyer, and the reporter refuses to interview me – but the National Post doesn’t want the public to read my comments about the story.

Here are my words, apparently too dangerous to the National Post’s agenda for the public to read:

This is Donald Best, the former Toronto Police Sergeant (Detective) who is mentioned in this article. Paul Slansky is my lawyer. He is a man of integrity and courage to take my case when it was apparent from the start that the legal establishment was simply not going to allow my evidence to reach a civil jury of my fellow Canadians.

No judge in any court listened to the audio recordings that I secretly made (and that prove my case) – and that includes the two judges that the National Post article mentions. Nor was I allowed to cross-examine the lawyer-witnesses upon whose testimony I was convicted and imprisoned in solitary confinement for 63 days.

Think about that: I was not allowed to cross-examine the witnesses about their testimony that the court relied upon to send me to prison.

Canadians are universally appalled when they visit my website, listen to the audio recordings, view all the evidence that was never allowed to come to trial – and understand what really happened.

Unfortunately, journalist Colin Perkel did not include in his story that a Judicial Review is in progress, and that the Federal Court just released a decision in my favour. Nor did Mr. Perkel include various background that would allow readers to decide for themselves what happened, and to follow the story as it continues to unfold.

After his original article last June, Mr. Perkel did not take advantage of my offers to be interviewed. I remain available should any Mr. Perkel or any journalist be interested.

Donald Best
Barrie, Ontario
website: DonaldBest.CA

*Stealth Banning is the practice of rendering an individual comment invisible to everyone except the poster. (Wikipedia)

 

 

Does Canada’s justice system hold any hope for common citizens?

A reader asks: With so many elements of Canada’s legal infrastructures failing its citizens, do you think there is hope for any real recourse for common citizens?

by Donald Best, former Sergeant, Detective, Toronto Police

Dear ‘S’,

Thank you for your kind and supportive email.

At the moment there is no real access to justice for ordinary Canadians. It can be fairly said that never before in Canadian history have the people and the justice system been so far apart.

It could also be fairly said that the elites who crafted and run the system – both the lawyers and ex-lawyers now known as ‘judges’ – are completely divorced from the people.

The only question is what form the rebellion will take when it comes.

Increasingly I see a section of the population completely dismissing the justice system as irrelevant in any decision making process where they believe they have been wronged. There is also a realization that we have a class-based justice system where rule of law is scarcely remembered by the courts and not at all by the legal profession.

This is producing a dangerous undermining of the very foundations of Canadian society – and if not stopped will produce a society like many around the world, where the justice system is known as nothing but a corrupt and owned weapon of the upper-class elites.

When the Toronto Star can report without contradiction that the Law Society of Upper Canada covered up hundreds of cases where Ontario lawyers committed criminal offenses against their clients, little more need be said.

Yours truly,

Donald Best

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