Despite a death threat he received on Friday, the general manager of the Kwantlen Students’ Association has said he intends to continue a lawsuit against KSA’s former execs.
A letter that arrived at Desmond Rodenbour’s home address contained a death threat warning him to immediately abandon the suit. The KSA is suing several of its former executives, whom it alleges used student dues to make nearly $840,000 in improper loans and $140,000 in suspicious payments.
Defendants in that lawsuit include KSA’s disgraced student leader Aaron Singh Takhar and three of his associates. Takhar took over KSA in 2005, in a dubious election. Among his first acts was offering $13,000 in unauthorized rewards to draw students to a special meeting where he had them vote to radically change the union’s bylaws. The prize draw itself was rigged to award the grand prize to one of Takhar’s friends. A forensic audit of the union’s finances found that, under Takhar’s tenure, a large number of funds were transferred to “AST Ventures,” whose name matches Takhar’s initials.
Rodenbour told Maclean’s that the KSA will not drop the suit. “This threat just clarifies how morally bankrupt and desperate the people are who were behind the original scandal,” he said.
Takhar is also facing charges of possession with intent to traffic, after a car rented in his name (and containing 170 marijuana plants) tried to escape police and ended up flying off the road, killing one person in the car. Takhar was driving nearby in another car.
