Toronto Metropolitan Students’ Union statement regarding ongoing investigations into 2021-2022 financial mismanagement
The Toronto Metropolitan Students’ Union is vested with significant responsibilities, and the Board of Directors has serious legal and ethical duties to the organization and its members. At this time we would like to inform TMSU members of an investigation concerning possible financial mismanagement within the students’ union.
The TMSU has been investigating a number of questionable financial transactions that occurred between May 1, 2021 and April 30, 2022. These transactions first came to light during preparations for TMSU’s annual audit. The TMSU immediately consulted with legal counsel and retained external, independent forensic accountants to review the corporation’s financial history and provide recommendations to ensure that financial mismanagement does not occur again in the future. The preliminary and confidential investigative report was provided to the TMSU on February 23, 2023. An overview of the report was presented by our legal counsel to the Board at the February 24, 2023 Board of Directors Meeting. The report is legally privileged and we have been advised that its disclosure at this time would jeopardize legal action against the previous executives.
We have updated the University on the report and the actions that the organization may be taking. The investigation into the flagged transactions is ongoing, and we are working closely with our legal counsel to pursue all available options for our students’ union.
We know these issues are important to our members and the broader TMU community. Despite a number of hurdles and obstacles throughout the year, the 2022-2023 TMSU Board of Directors has continued to work in the best interest of TMU students, fix the parts of the TMSU that were broken and ensure that the membership fees are used for their expressed purpose – the betterment of student life and wellbeing at TMU. We have completely rewritten our broken by-laws, hired forensic auditors, created new management positions and established new external ‘professional’ directors to create greater oversight for our operational committees.
We are committed to being as open and transparent as possible and will provide further updates as they become available. We will continue to do our best to fix our students’ union and be accountable to you, our members.
In solidarity,
TMSU President – Marina Gerges
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