The International Centre for Criminal Law Reform (ICCLR) has announced that the RCMP’s commercial crime section has laid charges against accountant Janet Mercedes Bayda for allegedly embezzling more than $1 million from the ICCLR during a period of several years.
The charges allege that Bayda created false entries in the accounting records of ICCLR to conceal unlawfully created cheques payable to herself.
Janet Bayda was a registered chartered accountant until she resigned April 26, according to an IICLR press release. Between October 1993 and December 2011, she provided bookkeeping and accounting services to ICCLR on a contract basis, the company said.
“Upon discovery of the fraud, ICCLR took immediate steps to notify the police and the appropriate chartered accountant regulatory authorities,” ICCLR said in its release. “ICCLR also took immediate steps to recover as much of the defrauded funds as possible. In January and February of 2012, Bayda, through her legal counsel, cooperated with ICCLR to facilitate the recovery of $425,000 that was traced into assets of Bayda.”
ICCLR is a not-for-profit institution founded in 1991 as a joint initiative of UBC, SFU and the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law.
