Paul Bickford
Northern News Services

Enterprise (Sep 30/02) - An Enterprise man has been sentenced to five years in prison for his role in a cigarette tax fraud scheme in Alberta.

Richard Cadieux, who represented himself during the trial, has also been ordered to pay $934,000 in restitution to the Alberta government for lost tax revenue.

The sentence was handed down Sept. 19 in Edmonton at the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta.

Cadieux, 57, was charged with fraud and uttering forged documents between December 1992 and March 1994. He received five years concurrent for each offence.

The charges were laid in 1999.

Crown prosecutor Gregory Lepp says Cadieux was the mastermind of a "big, fat fraud" which he estimated involved about $7 million worth of cigarettes.

In essence, the scheme involved avoiding taxation by submitting false tobacco tax returns and Status Indian tax-exemption vouchers through retail outlets on three reserves in Alberta.

While the false documents indicated the cigarettes were sold to aboriginal people, Lepp says they were actually sold on the black market to non-aboriginals in Edmonton, Calgary and elsewhere.

Justice R. Paul Belzil had issued a 57-page judgement on the facts of the case in July 2001.

However, he allowed Cadieux, a Status Indian, extra time to prepare an application for a constitutional exemption based on aboriginal rights.

"That argument was dismissed," says Lepp.

Despite that, the prosecutor says Cadieux did a good job of representing himself in court.

"He did an excellent job, actually."

Several other people had previously been sentenced for their roles in the fraud, including an Edmonton tobacco wholesaler who was tried jointly with Cadieux.

However, in his judgement, Justice Belzil wrote, "The evidence at trial overwhelmingly proved that Cadieux was the guiding mind of this fraudulent scheme."

He was intimately involved in all aspects of carrying out this scheme which he devised."

Cadieux, who is currently in a federal penitentiary, has 30 days to appeal.

As for the restitution order, Lepp explains it is a civil judgement that Cadieux will have to pay when and if he is able. There will be no penalty if he is unable to pay.