The B.C. Securities Commission (BCSC) is suing a former Abbotsford doctor for more than $37,000 in penalties he was issued in 2002.
James Swanney was ordered to pay an administrative penalty of $35,000 in November 2002 after the BCSC banned him from the capital markets for 15 years for defrauding an investor involved in a proposed private surgical hospital in Coquitlam.
According to a notice of civil claim filed in B.C. Supreme Court on May 1, the BCSC says Swanney made a payment of just over $11,500 on April 2 of this year, but still owes the remainder as well as almost $14,000 in interest.
Swanney was a director of Specialized Surgical Services Inc. in 2002, when the BCSC said that he and another director permitted the company to make misrepresentations in two offering memorandums.
A BCSC panel found that Swanney was the “key participant” in causing an investor in the proposed hospital to pay $50,000 for shares that were worth only $7,500 at the time.
Swanney was prohibited from acting as a director or officer of any company for at least 15 years.
In a separate matter, Swanney went to trial and was acquitted in 2006 of criminal negligence in the 2000 death of patient 20-year-old Christena Constible of Abbotsford. A coroner’s inquest concluded that Constible died of respiratory failure due to a combination of prescription drugs.
The B.C. College of Physicians and Surgeons suspended Swanney’s licence in 2003, fined him $13,500 and ordered him to meet several requirements before he could be reinstated.
He returned to his native Scotland, which in 2007 imposed its own restrictions on his medical licence.
Swanney later returned to B.C. and had his licence reinstated, but he no longer practises medicine.