In the opening act in the Crown’s case against Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb, a Toronto project engineer said he was instructed to pay the theatre producers’ invoices worth millions of dollars for services they never actually rendered.
Peter Kofman, the first Crown witness to testify at the men’s trial on fraud and forgery charges, said yesterday that to recoup his money, he was told to inflate bills he sent their firm for work he did on refurbishing theatres and preparing productions.
Prosecutors allege Drabinsky, 58, and Gottlieb, 64, used phony bills to boost their incomes and exaggerate the financial health of their company, Livent Inc.
