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Jierbal Maoic Weight Loss ExBrit With A UK Pension?ension? 8 Weeks For $88. Limited Time Offer ExPats Unlock Your Pension Value Free Consultation. Sign Up Now! Improve Benefits.Get A Free Review email I print II Sins of the Father • authored by Members for Democracy In an earlier article about the UFCW's pension investments, we asked three questions:

1 How prudent are these investments? Instantly watch movies Given the degree of risk involved in the hospitality industry, are they consistent with the principle of the "prudent investor"?

41` . . %It Wat Ch difiiral Kurnat Escape from Guivamtaqtro 31V today r 2. Whose interests do they serve? What has been the return on these NifillX traZi1( h investments for CCWIPP members? All things considered, who has benefited more, the members, the entrepreneurs or the middlemen?

3. What is this pattern of investing doing to the values of the union and its ability to represent the interests of its members? While we wait for the answers, we'll add one more question:

4. Is it right, morally and ethically, for a union to invest the pension funds of some of society's most vulnerable workers in companies operated by persons who have engaged in egregious breaches of trust against some of society's most vulnerable members?

"A fabulous, fabulous person"

He's a former Catholic priest from a remote village in Eastern Canada who, with a little help from a union pension fund, became a real estate tycoon virtually overnight. Industry observers have called his meteoric rise in the real estate biz one of the great success stories of the 1990's. He has lectured at investment seminars and been quoted as an industry expert in the media. At the height of his success, his home was a mansion north of that once belonged to Chairman Frank Stronach. He wined, dined and rubbed elbows with the elite of Canadian society - prominent business leaders, artists and politicians. Douglas Bassett, chairman and CEO of Baton Broadcasting and CFTO-TV referred to him in the Toronto media as " a fabulous, fabulous person". Others called him "giving" and "charismatic". He was one of the principal backers of Newfoundland Premier 's bid for the federal Liberal Party leadership. Premier Bob Rae cut the ribbon at the grand opening of one of his hotels. A couple of years later, he would be in the audience at a "unity" address by Ontario's new neo- conservative Premier . In an interview he gave in 1997, he attributed his success in business to luck. Luck and the Canadian Commercial Workers Industry Pension Plan (CCWIPP) and its plethora of investment corporations, would probably have been more accurate.

Within a few months of his quiet departure from the priesthood in 1990, Ronald Hubert Kelly got a his first big break when a company he'd set up, called Kelloryn, purchased a bankrupt Toronto hotel. Fifteen million dollars of the financing he needed to buy what was then the Skyline Triumph Hotel, was provided by the CCWIPP through two corporations that it "beneficially owned" - I.F. Propco Holdings 14 Inc. and I.F. Propco Holdings 16 Inc. The UFCW's end of the bargain was voluntary recognition for the workers at the hotel. [For a more detailed account of the UFCW's involvement with Kelloym see another of our featured articles]. Kelly would go on to purchase six other bankrupt or financially troubled Canadian hotels. By 1997 he had built an empire worth $500 million. His interests included hotels in Canada, Jamaica and the Bahamas, shopping malls in London and Ottawa Ontario, various other commercial and residential holdings across Toronto, London, Ottawa, Hamilton and Peterborough and a fish processing plant in his native Newfoundland.

UFCW Pension Plan Trustees Put Their Hands Together for Father Kelly

Although the extent of the CCWIPP's involvement with Kelly and his companies is not known, from what we can tell, Kelly has received more than $100 million from the pension plan over the past decade and his relationship with UFCW and CCWIPP officials has been especially close.

Cliff Evans, former UFCW Canadian Director and Chairman of the CCWIPP Investment Committee, Howard Gamer Preston, a management representative on the CCWIPP Board of Directors and Alexander Ahee, a lawyer connected to the CCWIPP all became Directors of Kelloryn in 1992. In addition, Evans was a Director of I.F. Propco Holdings 16 which loaned Kelloryn $8 million towards the financing for the bankrupt Toronto hotel. Howard Garner Preston was a Director of I.F. Propco 14, which loaned Kelloym $7 million to finance his purchase of that same hotel. Evans was also a director in Kelloryn Hotels (Hamilton) Inc., a company that purchased the historic Royal Connaught Hotel in 1994. Evans was also a Director in Kelloryn Holdings Inc. Then there was Kelly's relationship with AFM Hospitality Corporation; a hotel franchising and management firm in which the UFCW pension plan is a major shareholder. Over the years, seven of Kelloryn's hotels appear to have ended up in AFM's hands, and Kelloryn was at one point, a hotel ownership division of AFM. More recently, evidence has surfaced of a relationship between the CCWIPP, its I.F. Propco investment companies and RHK Capital, another Kelly enterprise.

Ron Kelly's Vulgar Displays of Power

But behind Kelly's business successes there was another story. In 1997, he discussed it publicly with a Toronto newspaper.

Kelly has never spoken publicly about the past or present and reluctantly agreed to an interview, saying: "I guess it's better to talk than let you take a shot in the dark."