Shaamini Yogaretnam
Chad Aiken participates in the Violence 360 event held at Shopify HQ on Elgin Street earlier this year.Wayne Cuddington / Postmedia
An Ottawa man who has become the face of the fight against Ottawa police racial profiling has been charged with defrauding his former employer of thousands of dollars in automobile insurance in an alleged rental car scheme involving two others, this newspaper has learned.
Chad Aiken, who previously worked at Avis car rental, has been charged with fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud and fraudulent concealment.
Aiken, 31, was just a teenager when he was pulled over in 2005 by Ottawa police in a traffic stop. He filed a human rights complaint against the force alleging that he was pulled over simply for driving a Mercedes while being black. The settlement of that complaint led to Ottawa police conducting a two-year collection of race data on drivers stopped by officers. That study found that black and Middle Eastern drivers were disproportionately stopped by local police.
The criminal charges against Aiken date back to December 2017. Investigators allege that over the course of a month, he and two others — Fercule Musanintore, 57, and her son Spike Lee Mwenisi Mugisha, 24 — conspired to commit fraud against an Avis location at 2150 Robertson Rd. in Bells Corners by agreeing to fraudulently obtain insurance for one of the company’s vehicles.
Musanintore has also been charged with intentionally attempting to mislead police and divert suspicion by reporting a fake collision. She was also charged with fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud. Police also criminally charged her son, Mugisha, with fraud and conspiracy and with the highway traffic offence of failing to report a collision.
Along with Aiken, Mugisha, too, has been charged with fraudulent concealment for allegedly trying to pass off an Enterprise rental vehicle as one owned by Avis. Like Aiken, Mugisha previously worked in the car rental industry, though not at Avis.
The exact motivation for the alleged scheme isn’t known, and details of the police case have not yet been made public but charges against the trio were laid by Ottawa police in early March 2018.
That same month Aiken spoke in Ottawa on a provincial tour highlighting his campaign to hold police accountable for racial profiling.
Aiken said he estimated he had been stopped by police around 50 times, starting when he was around 11 or 12.
“At first being stopped by police seemed kind of cool — kids at school thought so,” he said in an interview before his talk, “but after a while, it was no longer cool”.
Aiken said it has got to the stage where he refuses to drive at night unless he absolutely has to.
“There’s a 90 per cent chance I will be stopped if I go out,” he said.
At the time, Aiken told the audience: “I have no criminal record. I have a degree (from Carleton University). I have children and a house in the suburbs, which is policed by the Ontario Provincial Police, by the way — and I’ve never been stopped by them.”
None of the charges against the three, who have no criminal records, has been tested in court.
Aiken and Mugisha are next scheduled to appear in court in June.
Musanintore is next scheduled to make a court appearance on June 26 when court records indicate she is expected to take a plea.
Musanintore’s LinkedIn profile lists her as an accountant at the Supreme Court of Canada. A directory of all federal public servants lists her as an acquisitions and serials coordinator for the high court.
Ottawa police continue to investigate the case and say more charges could be laid.
syogaretnam@postmedia.com
twitter.com/shaaminiwhy
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