The tenants are evicted. The project collapsed. And creditors were pursuing the development group over tens of millions of dollars in loans and other alleged debts.
Some weeks ago, a vacant stretch of Bank Street went up for sale for $14.5 million.
It is a storied length of downtown Ottawa — the whole of the eastern side of Bank between Nepean and Lisgar streets.
Wallack’s Art Supplies and Framing occupied the south corner here for 50 years. Artists who worked in the studio spaces above have exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada or are represented in its collection.
Some tenants who lived here had done so for many decades.
The Evening Citizen
But when developers bought the four heritage buildings in 2022, they issued eviction notices the following year.
The plan was to demolish the strip and put up a nine-storey mixed-use complex with rental above and commercial below.
Many of the two dozen tenants said their evictions put them at risk of homelessness.
Two of those tenants, John Bergeron, 68, and Manuel Cuá, 60, were some of the last to remain.
On one occasion, while sharing a beer in the hall outside their second-floor apartments, Cuá, who is originally from Guatemala and cares for feral cats in the area, turned to Bergeron, who grew up in Overbrook, and said:
“We’re going down with the ship, Johnny!”
Bergeron had lived in apartment No. 10 in 178 Nepean St., one of the buildings that’s part of the block, since 1981. He was paying $500 a month.
According to Bergeron, in January the sheriff showed up with a stopwatch and gave him 10 minutes to leave.
Cuá, who was out feeding cats at the time, missed the action.
Their building and the remainder of the block are today empty. The commercial real estate advertisement notes the property is being offered under power of sale, meaning that a lender is seeking bids following a mortgage default.
Now a review of court filings and other public documents conducted by the Ottawa Citizen has revealed that the developers who bought the block were fending off creditors even as they were actively working to evict tenants living there with a reported plan of developing the property into housing units.
That timeline raises questions about whether the City of Ottawa has — or ought to have — the power to assess the financial capacity of developers seeking tenant displacement ahead of major renovations or demolitions.
The court documents show that numerous private and institutional creditors have been pursuing the development group behind the Bank Street evictions over tens of millions of dollars in loans and other alleged debts.
Active for years in such student neighbourhoods as Sandy Hill, the group is associated with a development and property management company formerly called Smart Living Properties, one of a number of related firms involving longtime Ottawa businessmen Tamer Abaza and Rakan Abu Shaar.
The lawsuits have generated thousands of pages of court documents, including receivership proceedings against companies that are part of the same development group as Smart Living.
That group’s properties are owned and financed through a network of associated companies, as is common in real estate development, with loans tied to individual projects and, in some cases, backed by personal guarantees.
Together, the lawsuits have sought to recover more than $65,000,000.
The claims contain allegations that are not proven.
In response to queries about these suits, the group’s lawyers stressed that all loans had been secured against underlying project assets and real estate, that over the last 15 years the group has been involved in 150 successful developments in partnership with dozens of stakeholders, and that in some cases core members of the group held only minority interests in these projects.
Nor, they said, did whatever financial distress the group experienced take place in a vacuum.
In an affidavit, Abaza says these difficulties arose due to “market disruptions following the COVID-19 pandemic, increases in construction costs, higher interest rates and inflation.”
One creditor mentioned in the court documents related to Abaza’s development group is the City of Ottawa itself.
As first reported in The Leveller last year, ECRE Smart Living Hinton Inc., as part-owner of the Dwell Hintonburg development in the Wellington and Holland area, owed the city $500,000, in addition to the millions in loans it and its partners owed others when they were forced into receivership in 2024.
Just two months after a judge appointed a receiver in that matter, Smart Living Properties appeared before a city committee seeking the evictions of the tenants at the four buildings on Bank Street between Nepean and Lisgar.
Council voted to approve Smart Living’s zoning and heritage applications on Dec. 11, 2024, thereby allowing the project and evictions to go ahead.
Ariel Troster, councillor for Somerset, where the block is located, cast one of four dissenting votes against the applications.
Speaking in general terms about how council could approve applications submitted by a development group that already owed the city half a million dollars in property taxes on a different project, Troster told the Ottawa Citizen:
“This is a real problem. If we’re approving zoning and building permits for companies that are in financial disarray, is this just leading to the broader displacement of tenants, with no realistic prospect for that building ever getting built?
“Are we enabling the eviction of tenants so that they just sell a building with vacant possession?”
Piecing together the court records and considering the group’s track record of completing projects, Abaza and Smart Living would object to the suggestion that there was no realistic prospect of developing the Bank Street property.
According to the group’s lawyers, most of the lawsuits described here have either been resolved or will be soon. In addition, the Bank Street project may now be poised for resurrection thanks to talks underway with investors from the Arab Gulf states.
“The timing of your article is unfortunate as many of the claims are being settled now,” wrote J.F. Lalonde, a lawyer who represents members of the group.
But resolution has not come for everyone.
Recently, Bergeron and Cuá were reminiscing outside their old building when a representative from Canada Post appeared to inspect the mailboxes at 178 Nepean St., which was still getting mail.
Cuá, who once worked for Canada Post himself, and who is never seen without his brimmed Canada Post-issued hat, knew the uniformed man. As he began opening the front door of the building, Cuá and Bergeron warned him: “Watch for the needles!”
The floor inside was strewn with hypodermic needles and other drug paraphernalia.
“You know the owner?” the postal worker asked them.
Cuá and Bergeron replied almost in unison:
“It was Smart Living.”
*
Among the numerous civil matters facing the development group is one lawsuit that tells the story, untested in court, of how a renowned Ottawa cardiologist’s foray into private lending may have lost him millions.
The court record behind those claims also offers a window into how the group financed many of its projects — and how that model began to fall apart.
According to court documents, Dr. Chamoun Chamoun first met Dr. Binny Kuriakose soon after Chamoun began practicing as a cardiologist at the Ottawa Cardiovascular Centre in 2003. Kuriakose is a cardiology-focused internist, and both he and Chamoun enjoy hospital privileges at the Montfort.
The pair became good friends. Over the years, Chamoun came to understand that Kuriakose, beyond his career in medicine, was active as an investor in various local business ventures.
Some of these were restaurants and bars. But Chamoun also learned that Kuriakose was investing in real estate projects alongside a business partner — Tamer Abaza.
Kuriakose introduced Abaza and Chamoun around 2018.
Remembering that meeting in an affidavit filed last year at the Ottawa courthouse, Chamoun said:
“I recall (Abaza) specifically advised me that success had allowed him to purchase a large multi-million-dollar home in the Village of Rockcliffe Park … being the most exclusive neighbourhood in the city. I was invited to his house on numerous occasions.”
Soon, Kuriakose suggested that Chamoun become an investor also, according to the affidavit: “Given our close friendship, Binny indicated that he could provide me with an opportunity to be part of the successes that he and Abaza were experiencing in the Ottawa real estate market.”
Following some early ventures in which he invested $4.2 million, Kuriakose and Abaza approached Chamoun about the possibility of his providing them with loans and bridge financing.
According to the affidavit, they told Chamoun that because the loans would be used for multiple projects, no specific security could be provided to back them.
But they reportedly went on to say that they were good for the money.
The development group, they said, had plenty of equity in properties across Ottawa and, according to the affidavit, Abaza would be personally guaranteeing the loans.
“(H)is personal wealth was more than sufficient to cover any amount that would be borrowed,” Chamoun’s affidavit indicates he was led to believe. “The guarantee and assurances given to me by Abaza was the principal reason why I felt comfortable in providing these loans.”
Abaza denies he is guarantor on any of Chamoun’s outstanding loans.
The money began to flow in June of 2021, with Chamoun Holdings Inc. initially advancing Bintee Development Inc., a federally registered corporation controlled by Kuriakose and Abaza, $250,000.
The loans continued from there: $100,000 in October, another $100,000 in November.
Chamoun was an active participant in this arrangement, at least at first.
On Jan. 13, 2022, court filings show, he used his Gmail to write Abaza’s lawyer:
“I sold the house. I have money to invest. Do you want me to speak to my banker? Thank you guys. Happy New Year.”
Two days later, Chamoun loaned Bintee Development $850,000 personally, outside of his holding company.
*
At about the same time, late in the summer of 2022, 211-231 Bank Street Holdings Inc., a federally incorporated company in which Abaza is listed as sole director and Abaza and Kuriakose as shareholders with controlling interests, bought roughly two-thirds of the eastern stretch of Bank between Nepean and Lisgar.
The buildings had been owned by the same family for decades and now sold for $8,075,000.
Abaza and Kuriakose’s holding company purchased the remaining third of the block about a month later, on Sept. 23, for $2,200,000.
Three weeks after that, 211-231 Bank Street secured a $13,000,000 mortgage from Fiera Real Estate against these acquisitions, with Abaza and Kuriakose listed as guarantors.
By year’s end, Smart Living Properties, of which Abaza was president, submitted its first development applications for the site.
About a year later, in October 2023, tenants found eviction notices posted on their doors.
According to the development applications, the plan was to demolish the strip — save for the heritage facades along Bank, Nepean and Lisgar — and erect a nine-storey apartment building there.
The resulting complex would house 263 small, furnished rental units and six ground-floor commercial units.
Your proposal would leave some of us homeless.
Julie Ivanoff
In response, many of the tenants facing eviction from the buildings formed the Bank Block Tenants association and began a campaign to remain.
In a video clip posted to the association’s Instagram account, Julie Ivanoff, a Carleton University architecture PhD student then living in an apartment above Wallack’s, can be seen among a group of tenants delivering a message to Smart Living staff at the company’s Tudor-style Argyle Avenue headquarters.
“You guys are taking video and this is private property,” one individual who appears to be a Smart Living employee says.
“We’re not inspecting anything and we’re not taking over anything,” Ivanoff replies before reading a notice informing Smart Living that the tenants had organized and would be refusing to leave:
“We view your proposed development as an attack on our homes and our community,” Ivanoff reads out loud.
The staffer looks at his feet as Ivanoff continues:
“Your proposal would leave some of us homeless.”
*
The Bank Street site was not the only major project the development group had underway. And along with its expansion across Ottawa came early signs of the financial issues to come.
Abaza and another of his longtime business partners, Rakan Abu Shaar, who acted as secretary and treasurer of Smart Living, were involved in the construction of Dwell Hintonburg, developed in partnership with Toronto-based Equium Capital Management Inc.
Those buildings, against which Smart Living and Equium secured a loan for $39,000,000, went up between 2022 and 2023, court documents show.
Meanwhile, Kuriakose and Abaza’s company 253 York Street Holdings Inc., of which the two men were directors and owned controlling stakes, had acquired 253 York St., in Lowertown, in 2018.
They had brought on a group of doctors, including some of Kuriakose’s colleagues from the Ottawa Cardiovascular Centre, as beneficial owners, according to court documents.
In December 2020, the York Street holding company borrowed $13,400,000, with the mortgage again personally guaranteed by Abaza and Kuriakose, and with the intention of transforming two existing residential buildings into one apartment complex.
Ahead of the redevelopment, the new landlord circulated eviction notices that read in part: “The property infested with bedbugs and other major issues that require immediate attention (sic).”
At the same time, Chamoun kept loaning more money.
In the six months between September 2022 and March 2023 alone, Chamoun and his holding company advanced more than $2,000,000 to Bintee Development, money Chamoun says in his affidavit he had on hand following the sale of his two medical practices.
Each month, Chamoun continued to receive interest payments in accordance with his agreements with Bintee, and he also received principal payments that by May 1, 2023, totalled $850,000. This left outstanding $1,075,000 owing to Chamoun personally and $1,000,000 to his corporation.
According to Chamoun’s affidavit evidence and an email filed as part of a lawsuit, one of Abaza’s lawyers contacted Chamoun in March 2023, advising him that Abaza wanted to “make things clean and easy” by consolidating their many loan agreements into two master contracts.
The resulting two agreements, covering both the Chamoun Holdings allocations and loans Chamoun had made to Bintee Development personally, together totalled more than $2,000,000 — all of it advanced in under two years.
Whether Abaza acted as guarantor in the contracts that arose from these consolidated agreements now forms the crux of an ongoing legal dispute between Chamoun, Abaza and others.
*
As interest rates climbed following the historic lows of the COVID-19 era, the development group continued buying properties.
Perhaps the last of these, purchased in the summer of 2023, was a parcel that’s home to a now-defunct Korean eatery on Nelson Street north of Rideau. Smart Living already owned the land next door, today a desolate, empty lot.
The new acquisition led to another mortgage, this one for $15,000,000, issued, like that on the Bank Street properties, by Fiera.
It was at this time that Abaza and his associates seem to have begun feeling the squeeze.
The $13,400,000 loan on the York Street site, secured by Abaza, Kuriakose and a number of Kuriakose’s colleagues, had matured on Jan. 1, 2023. It had not been paid, court documents show.
Equitable Bank, the real estate lender that held that mortgage, sent its first demand letter seeking its money on Aug. 29, 2023.
According to a notice of application, the bank later filed seeking the appointment of a receiver, no payment on the York Street loan had been made since shortly thereafter.
The notice also says the ownership group was in arrears on its property tax — $53,751, as of October 2024.
In addition, the notice alleges, against the terms of its agreement with Equitable Bank, the owners had allowed Bintee Development to register another mortgage on the property for $4,000,000.
Cracks were appearing. But the move against the Bank Street tenants continued.
A month after Equitable Bank indicated it had stopped receiving payments on its York Street loan, tenants living in the Bank Street buildings discovered the N13 eviction notices, issued in cases of demolition, conversion or major repair, pasted on the doors of their units.
Notices sent to the tenants offered up to 12 months’ rent in compensation, along with $500 to cover moving costs.
The residents had begun to gather for their organizing meetings on a landing on the second floor of 227 Bank St.
Many of those living in that building had not before met the often older, sometimes more vulnerable tenants living at 178 Nepean St.
Now they had banded together.
When, on one occasion, a property manager hired by Smart Living gave them what they felt was insufficient notice of entry ahead of an inspection, the tenants gathered on the landing and stood him down.
“I don’t know who you are,” Cuá, who was wearing his trademark Canada Post hat and was standing alongside his neighbours, told the property manager. “No. You are not coming into my unit.”
*
By 2024, Chamoun’s enthusiasm for Abaza and Kuriakose’s business interests was waning.
“I began receiving information from Bintee that several real estate investments that I was involved in were underperforming due to rising interest rates and declining occupancy,” Chamoun’s affidavit reads.
“I also experienced increasing difficulty obtaining principal repayments.”
Chamoun says that at around this juncture he was paid $225,000 off the principal Bintee owed but that Kuriakose then immediately asked for a new loan for the same amount.
“By that time I had growing concerns about the loans and declined to make any further advances,” the affidavit says.
Meanwhile, court records show, on March 1, 2024, Abaza, Abu Shaar, Equium and the rest of Dwell Hintonburg’s backers defaulted on their $39,000,000 loan from Canada ICI Capital Corporation when they failed to make a monthly interest payment of $294,369.
The previous spring, Abaza and Abu Shaar had put themselves down alongside several of their companies and corporate partners as guarantors for that loan.
None of this prevented the City of Ottawa from entering into a new agreement with Smart Living, granting it approval on its development proposal for the Nelson Street site. Smart Living had tapped Neuf Architect(e)s, a major Montreal-based firm, to work up the plans there.
Shortly after the city greenlit that proposal, Smart Living allegedly stopped paying taxes on its property just down the street, at York and Nelson, court documents filed in that matter show.
Chamoun says that in July 2024, Abaza and Kuriakose asked him to advance them $60,000 in connection to a property on Laurier Avenue in Sandy Hill. Chamoun told them he did not have the money, according to his affidavit.
It was against this backdrop that Smart Living continued with its plans for the Bank Street property and its residents.
The tenants and their supporters had begun staging protests outside the homes of Smart Living’s upper management in Rockcliffe and elsewhere, carrying banners about their evictions down the leafy roads without sidewalks.
This also happened outside Abaza’s home. During one of these events, the marchers witnessed Abaza himself roll into his driveway. According to one account, the tenants asked to speak with him. Abaza was on the phone and held a finger up, indicating he needed a minute. Then he slipped into his house.
Lawyers representing Abaza did not respond to a question about whether tenants attempted to speak to him outside his home.
Abaza briefly sought the intervention of the courts against the tenants gathering outside his home, stating that he and his family felt “fearful and vulnerable.”
The protests continued.
*
At this juncture, Chamoun was still receiving regular interest payments from Bintee.
By 2024, those payments amounted to $10,000 a month on the outstanding corporate balance of $1,000,000 plus $7,500 a month on the remaining personal loan of $750,000, according to Chamoun’s court filings.
But a statement of claim Chamoun later filed says things changed over the course of that winter.
In October, he received only partial interest payments, according to the lawsuit.
On Oct. 4, a judge appointed a leading business services firm, BDO Canada, as receiver in the Dwell Hintonburg loan. The judge noted the $500,000 in property taxes owed at the time by the development’s backers to the City of Ottawa, in arrears since 2023.
That same day, 211-231 Bank Street Holdings borrowed $3,400,000 against the Bank Street property from a Dartmouth, N.S.-based numbered company.
Both Abaza and Kuriakose personally guaranteed the loan alongside a handful of related companies.
At about this time, management at 211-231 Bank Street Holdings posted wanted-style notices on the doors to 178 Nepean St. and 227 Bank St., the block’s two residential addresses, with large photos of two non-resident organizers working with tenants, Josh Hawley and Ethan Mitchell.
“NOT ALLOWED ON THE PROPERTY,” they read. “CALL the police immediately if you see him.”
Hawley had been a principal organizer working with the tenants since the beginning of their campaign. Then a PhD student in sociology studying housing at Carleton, he’d been involved in tenant organizing for years.
The photograph for Hawley’s wanted poster came from a video taken of him by a Smart Living property manager who had been tearing down leaflets advocating for the tenants pasted up along Bank. “All these posters are great, you should spend some time reading them,” Hawley told him.
*
Chamoun’s worry over the security of his loans was by now reaching new heights.
On Oct. 20, 2024, he sent Kuriakose and Abaza an email:
“I need to express something to you both that I feel strongly about … especially when I try to sleep and my brain takes me to my financial situation.” he wrote them.
“This is my children’s money. I worked hard all my life and never said no to work to make this money … I heard you Tamer loud and clear when you told me and my wife that you personally guarantee it.”
Abaza replied later the same day: “I can assure you that the two million is secure,” he wrote Chamoun in an email, “and I am fully committed to ensuring it gets paid back.”
Chamoun received partial interest payments from Bintee Development again the following month.
The payments stopped altogether after Dec. 10, Chamoun’s lawsuit alleges.
That same day — Dec. 10, 2024 — Julie Ivanoff, of the Bank Block Tenants association, appeared before the City of Ottawa’s heritage committee to speak against Smart Living’s plans for the buildings.
Ivanoff noted Dwell Hintonburg’s business challenges, including the $500,000 in property taxes owed to the city.
“How can Smart Living be trusted to commit another massive building project while also having one of their largest developments seized due to non-payment,” Ivanoff asked.
“Are we meant to bet our homes and our lives on this?”
The day after, council voted in favour of Smart Living’s Bank Street application.
“This is shitty all around,” said Coun. Jeff Leiper, head of the planning committee and now a candidate for mayor.
“We don’t approve developments,” he added. “The committee’s role is to approve zoning. And I don’t think there is any question in anyone’s mind that a nine-storey mixed-use building is the appropriate use of this site.”
Part of the package that passed that day was a memorandum of understanding negotiated by Coun. Ariel Troster requiring that Smart Living offer the 11 remaining Bank Street tenants $20,000, plus money to cover moving expenses, in addition to the promise of a unit in the finished building at comparable rents for 10 years.
Tenants who opted against that right to return could receive $30,000.
Many of the tenants objected to the MOU, saying it assumed their evictions were a fait accompli and that Troster had embarked on the process without an appropriate level of consultation.
Troster argues the MOU was the only way the city could legally bind the developer to an exit deal better than what the province already requires — which is 120 days’ notice, one to three months’ rent and the right of first refusal.
The right of first refusal provided under provincial legislation does not cover demolitions. Troster saw the option contained in the MOU as a precedent-setting win for the city.
*
In January 2025, Abaza transferred ownership of his home in Rockcliffe, until then held jointly between Abaza and his wife Chantale Cyr, entirely into Cyr’s name.
That move, reflected in land records registered on the property, is also noted in Chamoun’s statement of claim, filed last year.
Cyr paid a dollar for the property and immediately secured two mortgages, one for $1,750,000, the other for $2,262,500.
The transfer only became known to Chamoun in the summer of 2025, after a lawyer he’d hired was able to comb through Abaza’s assets, according to his affidavit.
So Chamoun was unaware when, on Feb. 4 2025, he wrote Abaza and Kuriakose again.
“I have prayed that this day would never come,” he wrote them. “I told you before that I will not be able to handle the situation if I lose this money … I feel like sleeping and not waking up. I feel betrayed.”
Chamoun says in his affidavit he never received a reply to this email.
He is now suing Abaza and others to recover $1.75 million in loans, plus interest. Chamoun says Abaza personally guaranteed the loans he advanced to Bintee Development. Abaza has denied this in a statement of defence that also admits Bintee owes Chamoun the principal.
“Any default under the loan is curable and Bintee Development Inc. made and continues to make good faith efforts to negotiate repayment terms,” reads one of Abaza’s affidavits.
Chamoun’s statement of claim says the transfer of Abaza’s Rockcliffe home took place at a time when Bintee was in default on its loan agreements with Chamoun and Chamoun’s holding company and that Abaza “was encountering significant financial difficulties with other investments.”
The suit goes on to allege that the transfer of the Rockcliffe home “was done with the purpose of delaying, hindering or otherwise attempting to shield Abaza’s assets from his creditors and was therefore a fraudulent conveyance.”
In a statement of defence, Cyr, who is also named in Chamoun’s suit, and Abaza deny the transfer was fraudulent or intended to evade creditors and was on the contrary “made for legitimate estate planning and for other family-related purposes, at a time when Abaza was solvent.”
Earlier this year, Abaza, Bintee Development and a number of related companies countersued Chamoun, Chamoun’s lawyer Christopher Moore, and both of their respective corporations over mortgages Moore allegedly placed on some of their properties without authorization.
The lawsuit alleges these mortgages were, among other things, meant to trigger penalties against Abaza and his associates under a forbearance agreement with a lender.
Moore withdrew the mortgages after the countersuit, court heard during civil proceedings in April.
The Abaza countersuit also says Moore has a history of animus towards Abaza and Kuriakose, including once telling someone that the two men are “sleazeballs” who “could not to be trusted.”
In February 2026, Chamoun persuaded a judge to allow that a certificate of pending litigation be registered on the Abaza family’s Rockcliffe home to prevent further transfers. Abaza and Cyr are seeking to have that certificate lifted, a matter another judge is now considering.
On March 17, 2025, BDO Canada, the business services firm, issued its first report in the receivership proceedings involving Dwell Hintonburg.
(The Dwell Hintonburg matter remains before the courts.)
That very day, applications brought against the tenants on Bank by 211-231 Bank Street Holdings appeared before the Landlord and Tenant Board. Half a dozen people were still living in the buildings. These applications sought to end those tenancies.
The board did not issue its decisions until August, at which point it ordered that each remaining tenancy be terminated. The residents got three weeks to vacate.
“In my view the financial viability of the project is not for this Tribunal to determine,” the LTB vice-chair considering the matter wrote.
A few weeks later, Neuf Architect(e)s, the firm hired to work up plans for the block, made a claim for a construction lien on the property, citing money owed for services rendered. (It has made a similar claim on the development group’s Nelson Street site).
In my view the financial viability of the project is not for this Tribunal to determine.
LTB vice-chair
By January 2026, John Bergeron, who had lived in 10-178 Nepean St. since 1981, was still waiting for the sheriff to arrive and show him out.
On Jan. 8, according to Bergeron, it happened. Today the whole block is vacant and up for sale, with plywood in the windows of the retail units.
Representatives have said Abaza and Kuriakose are now minority stakeholders in the Bank Street project and that a Toronto-based firm, Verona Urban Developments, is working to salvage it on behalf of an ownership group bringing together 20 individuals from across Canada.
Contacted for this story, Abaza left it to Verona and his lawyer to reply to questions.
“If repeated publicly, the allegations contained in the statement of claim and in other court records that may be available to you, will suggest wrongdoing, with the result that my clients will undoubtedly suffer pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages,” J.F. Lalonde, who acts for Bintee and Abaza, wrote in reply to the Ottawa Citizen.
“We caution you against any mention of any of the claims made against our clients.”
But under cross-examination during a hearing that took place in April as part of Chamoun’s lawsuit against him, Abaza expressed sympathy for Chamoun, who he identified as a friend — and his doctor.
“I feel very bad for (Chamoun), and for a lot of other investors with us, and with other developers and anyone that’s in the industry with over tens of billions in receiverships and people losing their money in the worst time. One of the worst times in Canada’s history, unfortunately,” Abaza said, according to the transcript.
“I really do feel bad,” the Abaza transcript continues. “I also feel bad for myself for what I’ve lost. But unfortunately, I do not feel responsible for the market and the situation today in terms of tariffs and in terms of the situation of the market.”
Lalonde, Abaza’s lawyer, says that the few transactions related to the development group that remain outstanding will soon be resolved.
Kuriakose said in a written statement that he no longer has “any involvement in these properties or in other real estate developments,” although he remains a guarantor in some of the related loans.
Abaza, Kuriakose and Kuriakose’s physician colleagues appear to have come to an agreement with Equitable Bank on the 253 York St. loan — a receivership order from January has now been set aside and the mortgage discharged.
Abu Shaar, asked about the various lawsuits in which he is named, wrote in an email that “they have either been already resolved by discontinuance or (are) at an advanced stage of negotiations to be resolved or acquired.”
Asif Khan of Verona suggested it was the uncertainty created by tenant resistance that helped derail the Bank Street project:
“Tenant relocation requirements, despite enhanced compensation packages, led to some opposition and delays of roughly 18 months,” Khan wrote, adding that these circumstances scuttled the project’s financing.
Verona is in talks with potential capital partners in the Arab Gulf states with a view to refinancing the development.
Chamoun and Moore, who has worked as Chamoun’s lawyer, did not reply to emails seeking comment. Reached by phone, Moore said he could not discuss matters still before the court.
Meanwhile, Bergeron managed to find an apartment in a non-profit building not far from where he’d lived for 45 years. He had refused the MOU. It was his former neighbours on Bank who helped him move. Relocating tripled his rent.
Meeting with the Citizen at a nearby coffee shop, he surveyed the other patrons.
The place was full. Someone by the door was screaming obscenities to no one in particular.
“We are living through the end of the world if this continues,” Bergeron said.
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