Lawyers hired to look into the conduct of Mayor Rick Green suggested he might have broken the law, the Lidstone report revealed Tuesday.

The report details how Langley Township Mayor Rick Green allegedly received information about Brownshak, a property firm that involves the wives of Township Administrator Mark Bakken, Fort Langley-Aldergrove MLA Rich Coleman, and a local realtor.

Supposedly, Green got the documents anonymously in his mailbox in late October 2009.

However, email records obtained by the lawyers showed that Green had been communicating with a third party as early as August about Brownshak.

He asked for information, and the third party acquired the company's corporate register, a list of its directors.

Green then told an emergency meeting of council, which he called, that he received the documents in a brown envelope.

"The mayor misled council when the mayor on October 28 responded to emails about the purpose of the emergency meeting and on October 29 stated that he was surprised to receive the brown envelope containing the company search and register," the report says.

"The mayor misled Allan Hamilton, Q.C., [an independent lawyer] when the mayor contacted him on October 28 on the basis of the 'surprise brown envelope' to obtain an opinion that he could call the special meeting and exclude the administrator.

"The mayor misled Paul Hildebrand, Associate Counsel at Lidstone & Company, and the undersigned on January 21, 2009 when he told us his version of the material events," the report says.

On that basis, the Lidstone report suggests Green might have violated section 122 of the Canadian Criminal Code, which governs breach of trust by public officials.

However, it notes that a conviction may be unlikely due to the high threshold needed to prove "a serious and marked departure from the standards of conduct expected of him," the report says.

Green gave a complicated version of events on Tuesday.

He admitted that he heard about Brownshak during some breakfast meetings with "high profile people" around Langley. One of those people took it upon himself to track down the Brownshak register and gave it to Green.

According to a letter from the law firm representing Brownshak, the person who got copies of the register was Calvin Patterson, a supporter of Green who served on his finance committee.

Green read the report, and kept it in his office at the Township civic facility in a binder.

But Green said the documents did end up in his mailbox in a brown envelope in October, as he had originally claimed. The documents this time included a copy of a letter to a Vancouver Province columnist. Green said he then brought the matter to council's attention because he wanted to alert them before anything turned up in the media. Green said the register in his mailbox was the same document that had been in his office. However, Green didn't mention this fact to council or lawyers at the time. In June of 2010, he sent a letter to the Lidstone lawyers looking into the matter saying it showed someone had broken into his office and taken the documents, then sending them back to him via the anonymous envelope.

"A number of people had keys to my office," Green said, noting that he wasn't accusing anyone of taking the documents.

When asked why someone would steal documents from his office, only to send them back to him through his home's mailbox, Green said "How the heck do I know?"

Lidstone interviewed everyone with access to Green's office without finding a thief.

Green brought the documents he received to council claiming there could be a conflict of interest involving the administrator, Bakken, as land deals often intersect with Township regulations and politics.

However, the Brownshak allegations were initially raised in the 1990s, and a provincial investigation at the time found no conflict.

Brownshak was a partnership between four women, including Patricia Bakken, wife of Mark Bakken, and Michelle Coleman, wife of the MLA, and local realtor Sharon Schacter. Green publicly identified all three women in a press release he issued in Sept. 2010 when he apologized for misleading council.

Rich Coleman said the entire affair has been frustrating for him and his family.

On Oct. 28, after the council meeting where Green showed the Brownshak documents to the council, the mayor called Coleman.

Coleman said he asked Green if this was the first he had ever heard of the Brownshak matter, and Green replied that it was.

"Rick didn't tell me the truth on Oct. 28, 2009," Coleman said.

It has not been good for Coleman's relationship with the mayor.

"I don't know how you build a relationship with someone who lies to you," Coleman said.

Sharon's husband Joel Schacter, whose name also appeared on the documents Green released, said he has never received an apology, or any other communication from Green.

"I've never received an apology. My wife has never yet received a phone call or an apology for this," Schacter said.

He and his wife have seen friends and acquaintances ask him about the longdead issue since it was brought back up.

"That was the most discouraging thing for us," Schacter said.

He feels that while Green admitted to an error, he then left the matter hanging.

Brownshak's only investment was a $111,000 townhouse bought in 1996.

The home was sold in 2003 with an increased value of a little over $12,000, but Schacter said the partners lost money fixing it up and dealing with tenants.

Green's release of information about Brownshak would eventually lead to an RCMP investigation of the mayor. A special prosecutor concluded earlier this fall that no charges should be laid.

mclaxton@langleyadvance.com