Representatives of the Alberta Beverage Container Recycling Corporation (ABCRC) have filed lawsuits against three southern Alberta bottle depots and nine former ABCRC employees over alleged fraud.

According to the statement of claim, the ABCRC paid privately run bottle depots in High River, Strathmore and Cochrane more than $16 million collectively between 2009 and 2014 for beverage containers that were never delivered.

“The $16 million is a small percentage of the payments we do pay out to depots across Alberta,” explained Angela Wiles, ABCRC’s vice-president of communications and marketing, “but at ABCRC we don’t tolerate any sort of inappropriate activity from any of our stakeholders so we wanted to address this.”

Wiles says everyday Albertans were not affected by the alleged fraudulent activity as the depots did pay customers for the beverage containers. The alleged fraud occurred when the ABCRC collected the beverage containers and reimbursed the bottle depots an improper amount.

The statement of claim alleges nine former ABCRC employees who worked in the processing facility conspired with the owners or staff of the following businesses:

  • Cochrane Bottle Depot Ltd. (operated by Jaswinder Atwal)
  • High River Bottle Depot Inc. (operated by Jaswinder Atwal)
  • Strathmore Bottle Depot Ltd. (operated by Joga Punian)

CTV Calgary has made multiple attempts to contact the owners of the bottle depots but phone calls and emails have not garnered a response.

In a statement, ABCRC says allegations of wrongdoing prompted the corporation to launch an internal investigation which resulted in the termination of nine staff members and disciplinary measures against three employees.

The results of the internal investigation have been provided to the Calgary Police Service for consideration of a potential criminal investigation.

The ABCRC has filed a second, unrelated statement of claim against the former owner of the Turner Valley Bottle Depot alleging $41,859 in losses. According to the claim, representatives of the bottle depot allegedly purchased beverage containers that had never been filled or sold with a deposit collected. Bottle depot management then sold the ill-gotten containers to the ABCRC.

The allegations outlined in the separate statements of claim have not been proven in court. Statements of defence have not been filed.

With files from CTV's Ina Sidhu