Zalev’s conflict clear
By Anne Jarvis, The Windsor StarFebruary 17, 2012
On Jan. 23, Windsor’s auditor general, Todd Langlois, wrote explosive emails to Mayor Eddie Francis and the vice-chairman of the audit committee, Bill Carter.
He told them that Max Zalev, the chairman of the audit committee and CEO of Enwin Utilities, a city-owned corporation, was blocking reports, including a plan to audit Enwin. He said Zalev was “clearly” in a conflict of interest.
He said he was going to formally request that Zalev step down, that he was going to write a public report about the issue and that he was going to call in an outside body, possibly the province, to deal with it.
And he was going to write an additional public report about the “unprecedented” and “egregious” resistance he had encountered since he was hired as a supposedly independent watchdog.
Eight days later, Langlois was fired.
Are we still wondering why he was fired?
Oh, the blatant conflict of interest, the interference, the obfuscation, the double standard, the silly answers to pointed questions – the astonishingly frank emails by an exasperated Langlois.
“Tone at the top is as weak as I have ever seen,” he wrote in the email to Carter Jan. 23. “Lack of cooperation is unprecedented … fox guarding the henhouse … resistance throughout.”
It culminated in the audit committee meeting Jan. 26, when the committee recommended that Langlois be terminated. Zalev knew that Langlois’ three-year plan included auditing Enwin. Yet he participated in the discussion about recommending that Langlois be terminated and then voted to recommend that he be terminated.
But that’s not a conflict, Zalev insisted in an interview.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” he quickly interjected at the suggestion.
It doesn’t count as a conflict, he said, because the plan to audit Enwin wasn’t on the agenda. Off on a technicality.
It wasn’t on the agenda because Zalev wouldn’t allow it on the agenda, emails show.
Besides, he said, the plan had nothing to do with Langlois being fired, he said. So why did Zalev stubbornly refuse to allow the plan on the agenda?
http://www.windsorstar.com/story_print.html?id=6167315
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