A construction company owner told the inquiry into the Winnipeg police headquarters project he can’t explain why he sent invoices for $2.7 million of landscaping work on the project that was conducted by another, entirely unrelated company.

The inquiry heard Wednesday that Strada Construction sent Caspian Construction, the contractor for the downtown police HQ project, invoices in 2012 for work it intended to conduct on a berm at the Winnipeg Police Service’s Wyper Road firing range. Construction of the firing range was in the scope of the project.

The inquiry was told Strada did not have any employees at the time and did not inspect the construction site. The inquiry was told the landscaping work was actually conducted by Bayview Construction, an unrelated firm.

Michael Finlayson, a lawyer for the City of Winnipeg, asked Strada owner John Garcea to explain why he sent invoices for work that was not done, at a time when his company had no employees and the work was being done by Bayview.

“No, I can’t. I don’t recall these invoices,” said Garcea, who is better known as the owner of S&J Construction.

Garcea told the inquiry the invoices were progress payments on work Strada intended to do. Caspian paid Strada $1.2 million but later received the money back from Strada, the inquiry was told.

The back-and-forth of exchange of cheques between Caspian and several police HQ contractors has been a focus of over the past two weeks at the public inquiry into the project, which was completed in 2016 after delays and cost overruns that led to audits, an RCMP investigation that resulted in no charges, and two lawsuits from the city.

Caspian and several Caspian-controlled companies exchanged 15 cheques in 2012 with a subcontractor called Fabca, the inquiry heard earlier this week.

The City of Winnipeg named Fabca, Strada, Garcea, Caspian and dozens of other people and firms in a wide-ranging fraud, forgery and deficiencies lawsuit over the headquarters construction. The city dropped its proceedings against most of those defendants before Caspian and several related companies settled with the city in 2023.

Under the terms of that settlement, the Caspian defendants must pay the city $23 million by March 24. If that deadline is missed, the settlement payment rises to $28 million.

The police headquarters inquiry, which began last month, is slated to continue next week with testimony from Caspian principal Armik Babakhanians, his son Shaun Babakhanians and Caspian office manager Pam Anderson.

The inquiry is expected to continue until June.