CEO Mentzelopoulos’ Wrongful Dismissal Claim seems to advance. AHS, and effectively the UCP, are asked to put up the evidence to support that the former CEO was terminated for job performance issues. But Albertans can also see that in some ways clearing the air about the performance issues will open the question for the public: Whether the CEO was terminated to silence her corruption investigation.
Alberta Health Services (AHS) and the provincial government have been ordered to turn over records showing whether ex-AHS CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos was warned of any job performance issues before her controversial firing.
Court of King’s Bench Justice Michael Lema on Wednesday issued a decision on two issues in Mentzelopoulos’s sprawling $1.7-million wrongful termination lawsuit, which claims she was fired for investigating evidence of inflated contracts for private clinic surgeries, as well as conflicts of interest around the province’s importation of children’s pain medication from Turkey in 2022.
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Lema said statements of defence from the provincial government and AHS are “replete” with allegations Mentzelopoulos was dismissed for just cause, though the defendants now say she was fired per the termination provisions of her employment contract.
He also noted evidence that higher ups at one point praised Mentzelopoulos for “phenomenal” performance.
Lema ultimately ordered Alberta and AHS to produce “all” records “reflecting any warning of dismissal if performance concerns were not met,” as well as any performance assessments. He set a deadline of Nov. 28.
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Lema’s decision comes days after lawyers for Mentzelopoulos filed a letter from an Ontario Crown prosecutor assisting an RCMP probe of Mentzelopoulos’s allegations, which revealed Mounties are looking into allegations of fraud, breach of trust and money laundering by unspecified parties.