British Columbia's Supreme Court rules that investment fraudster must forfeit annual LIF payments to satisfy $36.7M judgment
February 19, 2025
An investment fraudster (Pasquill) must surrender payments from his Life Income Fund accounts (the LIF accounts) to the B.C. Securities Commission (the Commission) following a ruling by the province’s Supreme Court.
According to the decision, the 81-year-old had made no payments to satisfy a $36.7-million order made against him by the Commission back in 2015, which ordered him (and others involved in the scheme) to jointly disgorge $21.7 million raised in the fraudulent scheme, in addition to levying a $15-millon administrative penalty on Pasquill.
The Commission had made a previous attempt to seize the LIF accounts, which were created from funds originating in Pasquill’s Eaton’s department store pension. However, a preservation order obtained by the Commission was overturned by the B.C. Court of Appeal in 2021 on the basis of s. 70 of the B.C. Pension Benefits Standards Act (the PBSA), which generally prohibits the execution, seizure and attachment of pension funds.
Following the passage of legislation in 2023, the PBSA was amended to create a specific exception to the rule that property in a registered plan is exempt from any enforcement process, if the enforcement process arises from an order made under the Securities Act.
Pasquill argued that the payments from his LIF accounts did not meet the PBSA’s definition of “pension,” but the judge ruled in favour of the Commission, granting the forfeiture order sought. Acknowledging there was a degree of ambiguity created by the language in the PBSA and the context in which it is applied, the judge concluded that the legislature intended for regular withdrawals from a LIF to be subject to forfeiture orders under the 2023 amendments.
Click on more information below to read the decision:
