“We were dissatisfied with the end result,” said Agusta spokesman Dan Hill from Washington. “They didn’t deliver the product.”
The product referred to by Hill was part of the controversial marketing services agreement between ORNGE and Agusta now under investigation by a Queen’s Park committee and the Ontario Provincial Police.
After ORNGE paid Agusta $144 million for 12 new helicopters in 2008, Agusta hired Mazza and his team — including water-ski instructor turned vice-president Kelly Long — to scour the world for other air ambulance customers. Opposition critics have suggested that was a kickback, something Agusta hotly denies. It says it paid ORNGE $4.7 million to discover new markets, and that another $2-million contract was in the works but was never acted on.
Hill said ORNGE officials dropped the ball before the completion of the $4.7-million contract, and the work requested by Agusta was not finished.
“We are trying to claw back the money we think we are owed,” Hill said in a telephone interview. Agusta is claiming $1.8 million for work for which Mazza’s group was paid but did not deliver.
An ongoing Star investigation has found that the work done for the $4.7 million was shoddy, consisting of Internet searches and winding up in just two binders that interim ORNGE boss Ron McKerlie said was not worth the money paid. Kelly Long and the daughter of former chairman Rainer Beltzner did much of the work on the report.
To try to recoup its money, the giant Agusta has filed a claim against the bankruptcy of the for-profit companies created by Mazza to sell high-end rescue insurance to the travelling wealthy.
The court fight is heating up, with both sides asking for cash: a far cry from the close relationship they once had. Back when the choppers arrived in Canada, Mazza and then AgustaWestland CEO Giuseppe Orsi happily posed together for photos. Orsi is now CEO of Finmeccanica, which owns AgustaWestland.
As the ORNGE scandal hit the Star’s front page in December, one of Mazza’s companies invoiced Agusta for an additional $250,000 as the first instalment of a new $2-million marketing agreement. The bankruptcy trustee has said that payment was never made and has asked Agusta for the money, but with no result.
The three for-profit ORNGE offshoot companies had just $333,000 in the bank at the time of their collapse earlier this year. Bankruptcy documents show one ORNGEasset to be an Air Canada flight pass purchased in October, 2011 for $27,000. The trustee said Air Canada has refused to refund the unused portion (the documents do not say how much that portion is worth).
One bankruptcy document states that more than $6 million is owed to ORNGEcreditors.
One potential source of funds is $650,000 from the sale of Mazza’s house, an Etobicoke property that is effectively the home that ORNGE built.
Purchased in 2010 by Mazza at a cost of $735,000, the original house was torn down and a new one built, then sold in early 2012 for about $1.4 million. Police and MPPs are probing a series of loans and cash payments made by an ORNGE offshoot company to Mazza around the same time. According to the bankruptcy documents, the loans were in the amountsof $450,000, $500,000, and $250,000 for a “payroll advance.”
The Etobicoke house had a mortgage on it. After its sale, there was $650,000 left, and a deal was worked out with Mazza’s lawyer that this money remain with the bankruptcy trustee pending various court actions and investigations.
Mazza’s current address is a cottage up north. His lawyer has written to the bankruptcy trustee saying Mazza is not well enough to discuss his finances at present. A date has been set in September for a hearing.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Kevin Donovan
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