Fraud trial begins for city man behind Base Financial Inc.

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Fraud suspect Arnold Breitkreutz told a Calgary court Monday he only pleaded guilty last year because he believed it was necessary to appeal an adverse judicial ruling.

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Breitkreutz was testifying in response to a Crown application to make the admitted facts he agreed to on his guilty plea, which has since been withdrawn, as evidence against him.

But Breitkreutz told Justice Colin Feasby the allegations he admitted, including that his Base Financial Inc. was a front for a Ponzi scheme, were the result of bad legal advice and weren’t true.

He said the decision to plead guilty came after an adverse ruling by then-trial Justice Nancy Dilts who ruled admissible evidence against him critical to the prosecution case.

“The (defence) application was made to exclude certain evidence from the RCMP. She decided to allow it,” Breitkreutz told new defence counsel Cale Ellis-Toddington.

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He said after Dilts’ March 15, 2021 ruling, his then-lawyers told him to plead guilty so they could proceed to appeal her decision, which they were confident they’d win.

“I…