Officer charged in Project South investigation trying to plead guilty since February

The lawyer representing a Toronto police officer charged in the Project South corruption investigation says his client has been asking to plead guilty since February.

Speaking in court on Tuesday, Peter Brauti said Const. Elias Mouawad had asked to plead guilty immediately after he was charged.

Mouawad was charged with one count of unauthorized use of a computer and one count of breach of public trust, although he had only planned to plead guilty to the first charge.

Mouawad was arrested in early February and suspended by Toronto police without pay.

Brauti told the court Mouawad’s attempts to plead guilty hadn’t been successful because the Crown wasn’t ready to take a plea.

“They explained that, due to the size of Project South, (they were) dealing with disclosure issues and couldn’t take a plea,” he said.

Mouawad had expected his plea and sentencing to take place on Tuesday, Brauti said, before an unspecified last-minute issue around “conduct” delayed the plan.

The Crown told the court the conduct issue didn’t relate to their office or the initial delay in the plea, but that things were rapidly unfolding.

“I don’t know to what degree the sentencing process may have been harmed,” Brauti said, explaining Mouawad now wanted to wait to see how the process unfolded.

The court is set to adjourn for two weeks to decide how to proceed, a pause the Crown said would not impact any potential sentence Mouawad might receive.

Speaking outside the court on Tuesday, Brauti said his client felt he had been wrongly swept up in the Project South investigation.

“When information was released to the press, it made our client appear as if he was part of very, very serious conduct that has been alleged in Project South, when that is not the case,” he said.

“This is an officer who did a single check, unauthorized, which is unrelated to all of these allegations of drug dealing, corruption, attempted murder, all that. It is a completely separate issue.”

He said Mouawad had been “under this cloud” after Project South and that the public had not been given a “true picture” about his “relatively minor” misconduct.