Peter Aceto marked his 54th birthday by carrying out a family tradition: he blew out a candle on his morning Pop-Tart and made a wish.
It wasn't hard to guess what he was hoping for. The preceding 18 months had been a personal and professional nightmare for the one-time senior bank executive, who had made the leap into the high-flying cannabis sector in 2018 when he was recruited to join CannTrust Holdings Inc. as chief executive.
But a scandal over what was believed to be unlicensed growing at the company cost him his job as CEO after just nine months, and in June 2021, quasi-criminal fraud charges were levelled against him and two other company officials by the Ontario Securities Commission. As he blew out the candle that morning in December 2022, Aceto was facing the possibility of up to five years in jail.
But that afternoon, a call from his lawyer, Frank Addario, changed everything. In an incredible about-face, regulators had concluded there was no reasonable prospect of conviction after a key contention in their case — that CannTrust had been growing cannabis in unlicensed parts of its Niagara facility — fell away during cross-examination of a key OSC witness. The case against Aceto and his co-accused, Addario told him, would not proceed.
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