That Sulja case finally had some sort of ending to it, albeit a travesty of justice. You have a group of theives who used a local family owned company to steal 5 million dollars (while playing patsy’s ruining their good family name for a few hundred thousand). 5 years after the crime, a civil judgement and no end in site to the 2008 fraud charges.

Like Drabinski who was convicted from being charged in 2002 but walks free due to appeals our white collar crime is a joke. What about that Million Dollar investment scheme that build a “Taj Mahal” on Ouellette near Eugenie? Haven’t even heard about anyone being charged even though we know the whole thing was one big fraud. But what has this got to do with scaledown? More than you may think

This white collar crime has real and local consequences. Not only does it suck money out of our economy, evade taxes that could go to services but in the Sulja case I saw bits and pieces of first hand.

I was opening my restaurant out in Tecumseh and I remember seeing “the man in Black” Petar vucicevich at every auction I went to looking for equipment. At the time a Cafe opened up next to the DWBIA with an expensive Martin Lacasse Mural on the wall and an Office with the name Kore international opened up on Pelissier. In Detroit a company called Loftwerks was bidding on the downtown detroit revitalization fo woodward ave

Outbid on every auction item I bid on by the mysterious “man in Black” I inquired who this man was and what was he doing buying so much restaurant equipment. Turns out he had bought 3 former restaurants in Downtown Harrow and was planning to open them all.

Scaledown is not only about downtown Windsor, it was about connecting all residents to their local mainstreets businesses and artists. All of these downtown properties ended up being tied up, some for years. Of course there’s no evidence someone else would have been successful but with restaurants, there almost always is someone willing to take a risk. Maybe one of those other options would helped create a main street Harrow/Colchester may have been deprived of a potential to create their own mainstreet had the buldinds gone to the next highest bidder.

Not one political party including the NDP has made punishing this type of crime an issue. Its absurd, Conrad Black has gone through the entire process including exhausting appeals in just a few years. Many dont know that Conrad Blacks actions would not have even been considered a crime in Canada, and if he did anything that constituted a crime in Canada, jail time woulldn’t have been an option.

Steal 3.5 million dollars, tie up real estate on mainstreets for years and no jail time? This doesn’t even set off alarm bells here. By the time they execute judgement to sieze properties after all these years, I’m sure accumulated back due property taxes will outweigh any value of the bldgs. Also lack of maintenance would cause deterioration possibly beyond repair.

This is an article describing what Petar had Planned. Sounds kinda interesting, his crime was a blatant fraud, I dont know if he thought he’d never get caught or if he just thought if he did, what would it really matter.