Case Mount Real : Lino Matteo convicted

Photo Pierre-Paul Poulin

Michael Nguyen

Thursday, September 7, 2017 18:15

UPDATE
Thursday, September 7, 2017 18:25

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The big boss of the company Mount Real was found guilty on Thursday of having participated in a vast financial scandal in which 1600 investors lost more than $130 million.

“Lino Matteo had the burden to demonstrate […] that he has taken all the precautions to avoid the offences, the evidence shows exactly the opposite,” commented the judge Hélène Morin before being declared guilty of 270 charges brought against him by the financial markets Authority [AMF].

Matteo, age 55, ran a company which claimed to be specialized in the sale of subscriptions to magazines. However, if the company seemed to be doing well, it was financed with the money of investors.

The case had erupted there more than 10 years, and it took until 2008 for charges to be filed.

This is a second conviction for Matteo. In the past year, he had been sentenced to nearly eight years in prison for taking part in another financial scandal alongside Ronald Weinberg.

Matteo and Weinberg, one of the founders of the production house Cinar once considered a flagship of quebec for his cartoons such as Caillou and The Paddington Bear, had participated in a scheme to divert $ 126 million in accounts in the Bahamas, between 1997 and 2005.
In the case of Mount Real, Matteo will return to court in two weeks for the submissions on the sentence to impose. There is a risk of a maximum of five years less one day incarceration.