3+ Orders Independent Review Related To Allegations Against Former Employee
MONCTON – Greater Moncton economic development agency 3+ Corporation has launched an independent review into allegations of breach of trust against former employee Daniel Bard.
Bard, who was VP of investment attraction from July 2016 to January 2018, allegedly defrauded a couple who came to 3+ for business advice.
The RCMP is investigating Bard’s dealings, and civil lawsuits have also been filed against Bard, according to court records. One company called HIL Group Inc. recently won the case against him and his company, VM Venture Management.
Susy Campos, who was appointed CEO of 3+ in May this year, said she’s trying to find out how Bard was hired in the first place.
“I wasn’t here at that time, I don’t have specific details of the process that was followed to hire him. So what I have done is ask my board that we hire an independent individual to conduct a review, and among the things that that person needs to review is the hiring process that was conducted,” she said in an interview.
She said in the next couple of days, she’ll be looking for a qualified and experienced individual from outside the Greater Moncton community to conduct the review.
“I want to make sure it’s someone outside of the community, so we’ll probably be looking at someone from Saint John or Fredericton,” she said. “Our community is quite small, we tend to all know each other. So it’s just to put a little bit more of a degree of separation.”
She plans to have the reviewer in place “as soon as possible.”
“I want to have a report back to me at the beginning of 2020,” she said. “I’d like to get that independent review done and see if there were any failings from 3+’s point of view and where we go from there.”
Campos says Saly Davis, who owned a salon with her husband Clinton in Dieppe, came to her with the allegations in August. That led Campos to conduct an internal review, which revealed that Bard’s private business didn’t involve 3+.
While the allegations “appear to implicate 3+,” Campos says she has only spoken to the RCMP once regarding an investigation into Bard’s dealings. Any suggestion that 3+ is being investigated is “news to me,” she says.
Campos said 3+ will keep stakeholders up-to-date if new information comes up.
With files from Tara Clow of 91.9 The Bend, a Huddle content partner.