by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
December 14, 2004
In an article that appeared last Saturday’s Toronto Star, Peter Small and Bruce Demara reported on the submissions that were made to Justice Denise Bellamy, the commissioner of the MFP inquiry. The inquiry was held in an attempt to get to the bottom of why the city’s contract with the computer leasing firm ballooned from $43 million to over $80 million.
Part of the evidence heard at the inquiry was evidence that Toronto’s former budget chief Tom Jakobek made substantial payments on his american Express bill shortly after Dash Domi, a salesman with MFP, withdrew $25,000. There were also allegations, denied by both Jakobek and Domi that after the salesman withdrew the money, he met Jakobek in the City Hall parking garage.
The subject of the December 11 Toronto Star article were the legal submissions that counsel for the various parties made to the Commissioner. Submissions are not facts; they are legal arguments that are made to courts or administrative bodies and where legal counsel highlight the facts most favourable to their client and ask the decision maker to draw inferences and make findings that are consistent with the position of their clients. Nothing more; nothing less.
It was in the city’s interest to argue that the high payments resulted not from the misfeasance of their employees but from a criminal act--of Jakobek being paid by Domi to favour the company in the contract. In their submissions, the city quite naturally argued that Jakobek had received a $25,000 bribe from the MFP salesman. The lawyers did what they were paid to do.
But the Toronto Star, who has a definite bias against Jakobek chose as its headline, “Jakobek took $25,000: City”. While the headline is true; that is what the city said, glancing at the headline without reading the lengthy article would lead one to conclude that Jakobek did in fact take a bribe and that the MFP fiasco was his fault. after listing other submissions made by lawyers for the City of Toronto, the Star goes on to say, “Those were among the many strong assertions, often contradictory, contained in 15 final submissions released by inquiry commissioner Denise Bellamy yesterday…” There were lots of submissions made but the Star singled out the submission about Jakobek being paid off as its headline.
although the article did quote submissions by alan Gold, Jakobek’s counsel, the headline left the impression that the former budget chief took a bribe, something that was not proven in evidence. The headline was a blatant attempt by the Toronto Star to make Tom Jakobek not only guilty of taking a bribe, but responsible for the MFP fiasco, something that is not borne out either in the evidence or in the rest of the article.