Fraud suspect identified

Montreal crown prosecutors are about to file charges in relation to last year’s CSU fraud. Former CSU VP Finance Sheryll Navidad is expected to be charged with fraud, for embezzling $193,062 of CSU money.
“Around the month of September 2000, Sheryll Navidad wrote out a number of cheques to herself [from CSU funds],” said MUC Police spokesman Luc Belhumeur.
Navidad was in her second year as VP finance when the CSU first noticed a loss of funds over a year ago and started their own forensic investigation. The final figure for the fraud is a little under a fifth of the CSU’s annual budget. After receiving the forensic auditor’s report from the CSU at the beginning of this year, it took the MUC police fraud squad over six months of their own investigations before they were finally ready to approach crown prosecutors in August.
“It’d be nice to see her behind bars. I have no sympathy for her,” said current VP finance Patrice Blais. Blais took over the VP finance duties from Navidad, and was CSU council chairman at the time of the fraud.
The crown prosecutors’ notice is being mailed to Navidad, who is expected to appear in court within the next month to plead on the charges. If she fails to do so, a warrant will be sent out for her arrest. Blais believes Navidad failed to appear in front of fraud detectives when asked three times during their investigation. According to Belhumeur, maximum sentence for a case like this would be around five years in jail, but he says the sentence depends on how the judge feels about the case and previous criminal records, if any.
Blais hopes the CSU will file a civil case against Navidad if the criminal
charges succeed. Blais said civil cases are easier to win, and is the only way for the CSU to recover the lost money. But civil cases must be filed within three years of the crime.
“It be nice to see that everywhere she goes there’ll be a company looking over her shoulder, taking all her money,” said Blais.
Following the fraud, the CSU implemented new measures to watch over allocation of funds. One of these new measures is the hiring of a controller, a certified accountant who would verify and keep an eye on all CSU fund allocations both within and outside the body. However, a controller still has not been hired for this year .

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