Godfrey used go-between to mask lucrative relationship with D.F.C.
The issue of the business relationship between the Development Finance Corporation and its former Chairman Glenn Godfrey continues to grow more complicated … and incriminating. Evidence gathered by News Five indicates that contrary to Godfrey’s sworn testimony–as well as that given to us by his former law partner Christopher Coye–the Godfrey law firm was directly engaged by the D.F.C. to do the legal work on the thirty million dollar Novelo loan. It later enlisted the services of another lawyer to obscure the true nature of the relationship.
That attorney, Norman Neal, today told News Five’s Stewart Krohn that he was first approached by Christopher Coye of Glenn D. Godfrey and Company to review all the legal work that the Godfrey firm had done on the Novelo loan. Neal complied and signed the documents to be forwarded to the D.F.C., giving the impression that the work was done by Neal. Coye had told us yesterday that it was Neal, as attorney of record for the D.F.C., who had approached him to do the work.
When it came to the bill, amounting to perhaps as much as two million dollars in lawyers’ and government fees, Neal told News Five that the D.F.C. paid him and he passed the funds on to Glenn D. Godfrey and Company. That law firm then turned around and paid a small fraction of the amount–according to Neal about forty thousand dollars–back to Neal for his efforts at reviewing and signing the papers. Why did he do it? Money is the obvious reason, but according to Neal, it was something more. “I did it as a favour to Glenn Godfrey,” said Neal. “I trusted him completely.”
Norman Neal and Glenn Godfrey were classmates in law school and the two enjoyed a close personal and professional relationship. Neal rented office space from Godfrey and on several occasions was hired to do work for the firm.
If Glenn Godfrey, as chairman of the Development Finance Corporation, steered work to his own law firm and benefited from the financial proceeds, he would be in violation of his fiduciary duty to the D.F.C. and at the very least would be liable for the repayment of hundreds of thousands of dollars in ill-gotten gains.
When News Five contacted Chris Coye this afternoon to explain the contradiction between what he told us yesterday and what Neal said today, Coye changed his story, saying that the orders to do the work for D.F.C. came, not from Neal, but from his boss Glenn Godfrey. Godfrey has told the Commission of Inquiry that at the time of the Novelo loan, he had taken a leave of absence from the law firm and was not engaged in any of its work.
In discussions with various lawyers, News Five has learned that the lucrative relationship between the Godfrey law firm and the D.F.C. was common knowledge in the legal community … but to our knowledge no attorney ever sought to question the ethics of the arrangement with the Bar Association.
