In the end, it was Nick Vachon’s life on the run that cut him out of the money.
The co-founder of Escapade Music Festival is accused of stealing $660,000 in cash receipts from the 2012 festival only to charter a private jet to live as a fugitive in Aruba, where Ottawa police arrested him in August and seized $237,000 from a safe in his rented house.
Police say Vachon, 27, was co-operative, and spending six days in an Aruban jail, they say, made it easy for him to want to return home to Ottawa. He’s now in an Ottawa jail awaiting trial on theft charges.
And to mount his defence, he applied to the court to access the allegedly stolen money to pay a lawyer. That request fell flat after his lawyer informed Ontario Superior Court he had been removed from the case, and Vachon was representing himself.
Vachon represented himself on Tuesday and argued from the prisoner’s box against his former business associates’ motion for Ottawa police to release the seized money to them.
Justice Albert Roy ruled that Vachon’s actions, notably “absconding with more than $600,000 to Aruba” were “hardly consistent with someone who owns the funds.”
The judge was ruling on a motion brought to court by his former business associates, who wanted the seized $237,000 released to them.
Justice Roy ruled that his former partners in DNA Presents were the “rightful owners” of the allegedly stolen cash from the popular Escapade Music Festival at Ottawa Stadium that attracted 15,000 concert-goers over two days last summer.
Ottawa police have alleged that Vachon used some of the stolen money to pay for a charter flight to Aruba, an island in the Caribbean. Vachon was named as a fugitive by Ottawa police last summer.
At Tuesday’s motion, Vachon, from the prisoner’s box and under police guard, told the judge that the math didn’t add up, noting that there was some sort of error when it came to the actual revenue from the big music festival.
The judge told Vachon it wasn’t his job to do the math, and clearly did not want to join in on any speculation.
“I’m just a judge. If the sun doesn’t come up in the morning, what happens to the flowers?”
The judge then told court that he deals exclusively in evidence and not the “realm of speculation.”
The judge noted that the police and Crown said they could prosecute Vachon without the seized funds, and ordered that the money be released to the music festival organizers.
Festival organizer Ali Shafaee expressed relief after the judge’s ruling, saying it’s a “step forward.
“It helps a little bit. It’s a start,” he said.
The court heard that the festival organizers have outstanding bills following the alleged robbery.
Vachon was denied bail in November.
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