Bruce McConville Ottawa businessman and former mayoral candidate tells judge he burned $1 million to keep his ex wife from getting money post divorce.
A Canadian man has admitted setting fire to more than $1 million in a bid to keep his ex wife from ‘getting her hands on it’, post divorce according to reports.
Bruce McConville, 55, a businessman and failed mayoral candidate from Ottawa, said he sold several properties, then burned the money in two bonfires: $743,000 last Sept. 23, and $296,000 on Dec. 15, the ottawacitizen reports.
McConville said he managed to withdraw a total of $1,050,000 over the course of 25 withdrawals from six bank accounts before ‘setting the cash on fire.’
He claims to have kept the receipts from the ATMs but no longer has the money.
By not revealing where the proceeds from his sales went, the court had been unable to determine what the businessman owed in child and spousal support and ‘had been getting away with paying nothing’.
McConville’s explanation that he set fire to the missing million was revealed during a contempt motion last week before Superior Court Justice Kevin Phillips.
‘I find what you have done to be morally reprehensible,’ said Phillips, before jailing McConville for 30 days for failing to pay $300,000 in spousal and child support.
He also ordered McConville to pay his ex a $2,000-per-day fine.
The judge told McConville that the fines would be independent of any future child and spousal support.
The judge told court he didn’t think McConville set anything on fire, let alone $1-million in cash. ‘I don’t believe you. I don’t trust you. I don’t think you’re honest,’ the judge told him.
‘I urge you to get in compliance because that $2,000 a day is going to run up such that you lose everything,’ the judge told McConville.
The lawyer representing McConville’s ex-wife told court the story was just more nonsense, and noted that while McConville claimed to have zero income, documents show he has around $9,000 in expenses a month.
McConville ran a failed bid for mayor in the last city election on a tough-on-crime platform.
