Months of simmering tensions over a nearly $170-million debt owed by Peguis First Nation to failed lender Bridging Finance Inc. have boiled over, with critics in the community accusing the band council of arbitrarily writing down the debt to just $25-million ahead of an April band council election.
A Toronto-based lender, Bridging was placed into court-ordered receivership in April, 2021, at the request of the Ontario Securities Commission over allegations that Bridging managers funnelled millions to themselves at investors’ expense. According to a statement of claim filed Dec. 30, 2022, in the Court of King’s Bench in Manitoba, Peguis in 2017 arranged three separate credit facilities through Bridging: $19-million to build new homes and $3-million to renovate existing ones; $6-million to build two new gas bars in Winnipeg and Selkirk; and $30.6-million to replace credit facilities Peguis previously had with Bank of Montreal.
Under the Indian Act, on-reserve property and assets are in general protected from seizure by creditors, but those provisions can be waived. Peguis says its legal counsel believes that some of the Bridging loans required Bridging to obtain fresh waivers under the act, as opposed to relying on those previously obtained by BMO for its loans, and Peguis claims Bridging did not take that step.
Members of 269 Silent No More allege Mr. Hudson is using the financial statements to play down Peguis’s debt to improve his chances of re-election.
Can someone at the globe please do a detailed sources and uses accounting of all cash received by Peguis? How much went directly to the chief and his friends? Wendy_Stueck
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