The three former CannTrust executives charged in relation to alleged illegal growing at the former company’s Fenwick greenhouse were acquitted in a Toronto court last Thursday, Dec. 15, walking free after a saga that started some three years ago.
The acquittals of Peter Aceto, Mark Litwin and Eric Paul came a day after Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) prosecutors told the court they no longer had a reasonable prospect of obtaining convictions in the case.
The trio were indicted on charges ranging from fraud to insider trading in 2021, two years after a former employee of CannTrust blew the whistle to the Voice and other media outlets about allegedly illegally grown cannabis at the Fenwick site. The OSC and the RCMP alleged that the three men were aware that roughly half of the cannabis growing in the facility at the time was not licensed by Health Canada.
However, testimony from former CannTrust compliance director Graham Lee was picked apart by defence lawyers during the trial, which included Lee’s admission that he mistakenly used the words “licensed” and “unlicensed” to describe some of the growing rooms in Fenwick.
The lawyer for former CEO Aceto said his client was happy to be exonerated.
“For over two years, Peter Aceto sat quietly while his earned reputation was under a cloud of wrongful allegations,” lawyer Frank Addario said, according to the Canadian Press. “It is not possible to understate the effect of a wrongful allegation against a citizen.”
The executives worked out of CannTrust’s headquarters in Vaughan, some 130 kilometres north of the Fenwick facility. However, Aceto told the Voice in early 2019 that he regularly visited the Pelham site.
Aceto, Litwin, and Paul were either fired by CannTrust or resigned after the growing scandal broke. After the company filed for creditor protection and saw its stock delisted from two major North American exchanges, CannTrust was sold off and renamed Phoena — which continues to operate the Fenwick facility.
A Phoena PR spokesperson told the Voice in October that the former executives have nothing to do with the current iteration of the company.
“Over three years ago the former CEO was dismissed with cause by a special committee of the board of directors, and the chairman of the board was forced to resign at the same time,” Hill+Knowlton’s Jane Shapiro said. “The former company was not charged. Phoena has no interest in these matters.”
