Former Metafore chairman Joe Vos is facing a series of criminal charges relating to his tenure with the firm six years ago.
Waterloo Regional Police said Joseph Adrian Vos, of Elora, Ont., was charged after a lengthy investigation with defrauding Toronto’s CTI Technologies Inc. between 2000 and 2001, falsifying books and documents, uttering a forged document and issuing a false prospectus.
In 2000 CTI merged with MicroAge Calgary and Vos’ MicroAge Southwestern Ontario (which was also known for a time as Metafore Inc.) to form Metafore Corp.
The maximum penalties for each of the fraud, forged documents and fake prospectus allegations is 10 years.
The falsifying books charge carries a maximum penalty of five years.
The charges were laid in January, but it was only last month, when they were brought to court, that the Waterloo police released the names of the alleged victim company.
The case was adjourned to April 28.
The creation of Metafore, now a large systems integrator with offices across the country, became controversial soon after the merger.
As a result of the deal Hartco, a Montreal-based distributor, owned one-third of the newly-created company, with Joe Vos and his brother, Ed, owning one-sixth and others also owning one-sixth shares. But Hartco had to take over complete ownership after discovering financial irregularities. In 2002 it had to take a $4.8 million charge.
Ed Vos remained with Metafore until January, according to company president Bryant Jackson, who said he left to travel.
In 2002 the Ontario’s Institute of Chartered Accountants opened an investigation over an alleged mis-appropriation of $8 million from Metafore or its predecessor companies.
According to a report on the institute’s Web site, as a result of that investigation Joe Vos, a chartered accountant, was dismissed as a member in December, 2002 for violating its rules of conduct, fined $50,000 and ordered to pay $15,000 in costs.
In its decision the institute said it investigated the flow of $41 million between Metafore Inc. and other companies from 1995 and August, 2001. The investigation included there had been an overstatement of $38 million in Metafore’s receivables by $10.5 million.
Ultimately it concluded there had been a misappropriation of $10.6 million, of which just over $2 million was paid back, leaving a net misappropriation of $8.5 million.
