Officer leaves OPP amid conflict questions at OLG

The Ontario Provincial Police is reviewing the temporary assignment of a senior officer to the province's lottery corporation after a CBC investigation questioned whetherthe officer'srole at the corporationcould have affected a probe into retailer lottery fraud.

Chief Supt. Michael Sharland, who has worked at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation since 2004, announced late Wednesday his retirement from the OPP to stay on as the company's vice-president of security.

Hisdeparture and the OPP's review come after an investigation by The Fifth Estate this week raised questions about why the OPP had one of its own inside the lottery corporation while the force was probing allegations of lottery fraud by an OLG ticket retailer.

The OPP had been investigating the case of82-year-oldBob Edmonds of Coboconk, Ont., who alleged he had his $250,000 lottery ticket stolen by a retail clerk.

Felt stonewalled by lottery officials

OPP Const. Al Lee was one of the investigators working on the Edmonds file. Hetold CBChe felt stonewalled by lottery officials when he showed up with a warrant and was only handed a small, edited file.

"I wondered what was in that smaller file and what had been removed from the original file," Lee said. "There's certainly another file someplace that I have never seen or have I ever obtained."

Concerned by the thin file, Lee drafted another warrant. He notified thelottery corporationof his intent to do another search and e-mailed Sharland, who was then working as the head of the lottery corporation'ssecurity.

But shortly after that, Lee was transferred for unrelated reasons and his superiors decided not to pursue another search of lottery headquarters. Lee has been instructed not to talk to the media.

The OPP is nowexamining Sharland's secondment to thelottery corporationto ensure there was no conflict of interest or perception of conflict of interest, said OPP Insp. Dave Ross.

"There's a potential perception, obviously, that the seconded member could potentially have some influence over the outcome of the investigation," said Ross.

"We don't have any evidence to support that at this time, but we want to make sure that the agreement is structured so certainly that wouldn't occur."

The other four provincial lottery companies — which sell tickets in the Atlantic region,Quebec, Western Canada andB.C. — hire former police officers for security jobs, but none has run into thelottery corporation'sproblem, representatives said.