MONTREAL - Thousands of Norbourg investors hope a $55-million settlement will extinguish five years of pain and allow them to recover nearly all of the money they lost in one of the biggest investment frauds in Canadian history.
More than 9,200 people who lost $115 million were promised Wednesday they will receive payments within three months.
"I'm ready to turn the page and start a new life,'' Michel Vezina, one of two lead defendants in the class action lawsuit, said after the deal was announced.
The 71-year-old insurance appraiser and auto body repairman was forced to return to work two years after retiring, but considered himself luckier than other investors who were weighed down by heavy debts.
"There were difficult moments but I never lost hope and knew that we would win.''
Wilhelm Pellemans, a 70-year-old Laval plastic surgeon who was co-plaintiff, said he's particularly happy for the other victims.
"During those five years you have ups and downs and you never know because sometimes you never go to the 100 per cent so what we achieved today I think is sort of victory for us,'' he said in an interview.
Jacques Larochelle, one of the lawyers who has been working on the case for years, said the settlement is a landmark for a case of this kind.
"I think it's the first time in the judicial -- Canadian judicial history that the victims of a major fraud are indemnified to the full extent of their loss and capital," said Larochelle.
Payments could exceed $60 million
Victims of the 2005 fraud will likely begin receiving distributions from the fund in April, about a month after it is expected to receive approval from the Quebec Superior Court.
Investors will be automatically contacted and don't need to register unless they have moved or are not included on any contact lists.
The total final distributions could exceed $60 million once all the month is accumulated by liquidator Ernst and Young.
The settlement Wednesday is in addition to $58.5 million from a fund administered by Quebec's securities regulator, the bankruptcy trustees and liquidator and Quebec's revenue department.
The settlement with Quebec's securities regulator, as well as four groups that were directly involved in Norbourg -- Beaulieu Deschambault and Remi Deschambault, financial services firm The Northern Trust Company, KPMG LLP and Concentra Trust -- doesn't include an admission of liability.
Case history
The Norbourg scandal first came to light in 2005, when Quebec's security regulator noticed irregularities in certain accounts.
The financial group's founder, Vincent Lacroix, was convicted of 51 violations of securities law in 2007 for making dozens of withdrawals from investor accounts.
Lacroix was sentenced to eight years in prison for violating securities law.
In 2008, he and five former co-workers were charged with criminal fraud, forgery and other crimes.
A year later, Lacroix pleaded guilty to all 200 counts against him, and was later sentenced to an additional 13 years in prison.
If granted early parole, he could be released later this year
Co-accused
Five other people associated with Norbourg are on trial for conspiring with Lacroix.
Their first trial ended with an impasse, forcing the crown to reduce the number of charges to 615 in an effort to make the case less complex.
That second trial began in September 2010 and was expected to last four months.
The five alleged co-conspirators are External Auditor Remi Deschambault, Comptroller Jean Cholette, former Norbourg Director Serge Beugre, ex-bureaucrat Jean Renaud, and Computer Technician Felicien Souka.
