A provincial judge has temporarily frozen up to $8.5 million in assets belonging to Alberta separatist lawyer Jeffrey Rath and his professional corporation in an escalating court fight over trust money from a First Nation Treaty settlement, court documents state.
On July 10, Alberta Court of King’s Bench Justice Marion granted an interim Mareva order against Rath and Jeffrey R.W. Rath Professional Corporation, operating as Rath & Company, finding reasonable grounds to believe assets could be moved or dissipated before judgment in a court battle between Rath and Tallcree First Nation.
A Mareva order, also known as a freezing order, is an extraordinary pre-judgment remedy intended to stop a defendant from transferring, hiding, or liquidating assets before a case is decided, so that any eventual financial award can still be collected.
The order freezes exigible property up to $8,518,075 and includes bank or investment accounts, vehicles, real estate property, personal property and shares. It also prohibits the use of secured credit — such as a loan, line of credit or credit card — if repayment is secured against property they have an interest in.
It remains in effect until July 15, when a further hearing is scheduled.
Rath declined to answer specific questions about the Mareva order from Global News, as the matters remain before the court.
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A co-founder of the Alberta Prosperity Project, Rath is a leading voice in the separatist movement and has long represented First Nations in landmark treaty settlements.
This order comes after an extended fight between Tallcree and Rath, which escalated from a fee dispute into a battle over trust money that, according to court documents filed by Tallcree, would benefit minors.
The allegations have not been proven in court.
In 2021, Alberta courts slashed a 20-per-cent fee that Rath & Company charged for Tallcree’s $57.6-million Treaty 8 settlement, ordering an $8.5-million refund into their First Nation Trust.
According to an affidavit filed by Tallcree chief Rupert Meneen, the trust distributed settlement money to beneficiaries and held the shares of members who were minors until they reached adulthood. Rath’s firm was the fund’s sole trustee.
New court filings underpinning the injunction allege that Rath withheld financial statements from the trust and that it was only through those filings that Tallcree’s leadership discovered he had charged more than $6 million in 2024 — the same fiscal year the trust was required to repay the court. Tallcree’s lawyers argue the trust may have effectively paid for much of its own repayment.
Meneen alleges that Rath stopped providing financial statements for the trust after 2020, despite obligations to do so. Statements were produced only after repeated demands, including a court-enforced order, according to allegations in court documents.
Those statements, according to court documents, showed that in 2024, Rath charged the trust large bills, including $4.6-million in retroactive “trust administrative costs” and $1.4-million in “professional fees.”
Meneen’s lawyers allege that the timing suggests Rath “repaid the trust with its own money.” The following year, he charged the trust another $420,000 in similar fees.
Rath has not yet filed a response to the allegations.
By contrast, Meneen’s application states that BMO Trust Company — which his lawyers sought to replace Rath as trustee — would charge an expected annual fee of about $44,700 before tax.
Tallcree says it doesn’t know where the trust funds are, court documents state, alleging that it thought they were held in an RBC account until it learned they had been moved.
On June 26, Justice Parker ordered that Rath PC be removed immediately as a trustee on an interim basis and replaced with BMO. He was ordered to provide information and records within a matter of weeks, imposing a $2,500 daily fine for each day the firm failed to meet specified deadlines.
Rath must now deliver responding evidence by Tuesday, July 14, the day before the hearing.
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