The Indo-Canadian, who worked as an IT director for Ontario’s ministry of finance, stole $30 million though kickbacks and $11 million from COVID aid
Web Desk
TORONTO: Suresh Madan, a former IT director with the government of Ontario, has been jailed for 10 years for defrauding the province of $47 million.
Madan, who served with Ontario’s ministry of finance, stole $36 millon through kickbacks from 2011 to 2020 through a complex fee-for-service consultancy fraud. He would hand out contracts to “dummy” consultants, and funnel millions in taxpayer money to bank accounts controlled by his family.
He also stole $11 million in Covid relief meant to help families offset the cost of kids learning at home during the pandemic lockdown in 2020.
As part of his guilty plea, Madan has already returned $30 million of the stolen money to the Ontario government.
He will have to pay the remaining amount within five years after his release. If he doesn’t pay that amount within that period, he will be jailed for another six years.
The Ontraio government fired Madan in 2020 and sued him, his wife Shalini and their two sons for exploiting “their positions of employment with Ontario and unique access to the Support for Families Program and payment processing system.”
All four were IT employees for the provincial government.
Madan entered the guilty plea so that his wife and two sons also don’t go to jail.
As his lawyer explained after his sentencing on Tuesday, “Mr. Madan, at the sentencing, was – in taking responsibility – trying to drive home the point that it was him, and not his family, and that’s why it is he who is going to jail and why it is his wife who is having all charges withdrawn, and why his sons have not been charged at all.”
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