Jean-Paul Sartre once said: "Hell is other people." For Maria Messina, hell might just be other people's alleged frauds. She said so on the stand. "For me it was a personal hell," she told the court in describing a particularly brutal interrogation by investigators for the U.S. Securities and Exchange ...

Attempts by Livent co-founders Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb to continue to allegedly cook the company's books finally prompted Maria Messina to blow the whistle on the fraud that ultimately destroyed the theatre company.

As a former partner at the accounting firm of Deloitte and Touche, Maria Messina audited Livent's books for more than four years and never had an inkling of the massive fraud that was occurring at the theatre company, Messina told an Ontario court today. Even after joining Livent in 1996 ...

While lawyers representing Livent co-founders Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb were trying to convince a criminal court judge that their clients were not guilty of criminal fraud charges in connection with the collapse of the theatre company, a second set of lawyers representing the auditors from Deloitte & Touche were ...

To the outside world Myron Gottlieb was the business brains of Livent who steered the company's financial course while his partner, Garth Drabinsky, wielded his creative genius in staging fabulous musical theatre productions like Phantom of the Opera, Showboat and Ragtime. In reality, Gottlieb was a simple businessman who understood ...

When does an inconsistent answer from a witness in court rise from an overly general statement or a genuine mistake to become an out-and-out lie? That's the answer Edward Greenspan is trying to get during his grueling cross-examination former Livent senior accountant Gordon Eckstein.

During a particularly tense cross examination of former Livent senior accountant Gordon Eckstein, Edward Greenspan, the defence lawyer representing Garth Drabinsky, approached the witness stand with a photo of U.S. president Bill Clinton standing in between Drabinsky and an attractive woman. The photo, Greenspan told the court, proved could not ...

If you're looking for a solid alibi, you can't do much better than having your picture taken with a U.S. president in Washington, D.C. at the time when you are supposedly also in a meeting allegedly cooking your company's books. Edward Greenspan may be hoping that a picture of his ...

Livent's former senior accountant denied telling employees at the doomed theatre company that if the widespread fraud at the company was ever uncovered, he would merely invoke the "Nuremberg defence," and claim he was merely following orders, an Ontario Court heard today.

Lawyers representing Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb in the Livent criminal fraud trial have one simple goal when it comes to Gordon Eckstein: completely destroy his credibility.