By Ashleigh Stewart and Charles Rusnell
Global News
Published August 24, 2026
10 min read
For years, Alberta separatist leader Jeffrey Rath controlled two First Nations’ settlement trusts and drained millions from them, allegedly without consent.
Now court orders, asset freezes and an investigative receiver are closing in, forcing him to account for tens of millions of dollars in disputed trust money.
Rath — who denies any wrongdoing — has emerged as the separatist movement’s leading spokesman and legal architect, co-founding the Alberta Prosperity Project and acting as its legal counsel. He has also spent decades representing First Nations in treaty claims.
The Tallcree and Sturgeon Lake Cree Nations have launched overlapping and escalating legal actions. Both allege that after they sued Rath over his contingency charges, his firm retroactively charged millions of dollars in trust fees without informing them and withheld financial records that would have revealed the withdrawals.
In 2017, Rath’s professional corporation, RathPC, collected $11.5 million under a contingency fee agreement with Tallcree after the band settled a $57.6-million claim with the federal government. A judge later ruled the payment unreasonable and ordered the firm to repay $8.5 million. The following year, Sturgeon Lake paid RathPC $28.6 million under another contingency fee agreement, which a judge later declared invalid.
As part of those settlements, Rath’s professional corporation also became the trustee of funds to be distributed to beneficiaries under 18. Those trusts are now at the centre of Rath’s legal difficulties.
To determine where the millions of dollars of disputed First Nations money may have gone, Global News reviewed thousands of pages of court documents and financial records, conducted corporate, personal property and land title searches, and interviewed forensic accounting and mortgage law experts.
The investigation uncovered a complicated set of financial arrangements: a security registration, or lien, over all of Rath’s current and future assets by a Delaware company; a $10-million collateral mortgage registered in his wife’s name on property they jointly owned; and the purchase and sale of millions of dollars worth of precious metals.
Rath declined several interview requests from Global News, stating, “I’m responding through court proceedings at an appropriate time. I will not comment on personal financial matters that are not properly part of the public record or any other matter that is currently before the courts.”
While judges have ruled there was strong prima facie, or initial, evidence of breach of fiduciary trust by Rath in the Tallcree case, none of the allegations in either of the First Nations’ civil actions have been conclusively proven in court.
Of the two First Nations, Tallcree was the first to challenge Rath’s stewardship of its trust and later shared evidence with Sturgeon Lake.
Tallcree challenged millions’ worth of Rath’s legal and administrative fees, but its central allegation is that Rath misappropriated the $8.5-million contingency fee refund meant for the beneficiaries of its trust.
On Nov. 17, 2025, 12 days after a court order required Rath to refund the Tallcree trust, court-filed banking records show Rath instead deposited it into a Bow Valley Credit Union account for his professional corporation, opened that same day.
Rath immediately bought $8 million of bullion from a Calgary company called Silver Gold Bull Inc. and purchased a $500,000 bank draft bearing his name.
Court records show that Rath, in an email, had suggested he was entitled to the trust money, despite earlier King’s Bench and Court of Appeal decisions.
“I find that the response of Mr. Rath was a flimsy and brazen response to the request about where the money went,” Court of King’s Bench Justice Michael Marion wrote in a July 10 ruling.
“It is his position, it seems, that he is entitled to it, notwithstanding the extensive litigation about that issue, which did not go in his favour.”
Last month, Tallcree obtained an interim Mareva, or freezing, order to cover its disputed assets. The move prevents Rath, his professional corporation, and his law firm, Rath & Company, from moving or dissipating assets before the cases in question are decided. Rath did not oppose the interim order pending a future hearing on the order’s merit.
The court also appointed an investigative receiver to trace the disputed funds.
In a separate hearing last week, another judge granted Sturgeon Lake’s application for an interim freezing order on Rath’s assets while the band seeks to have him removed as trustee.
“The large withdrawals made from the trust by Rath and/or RathPC have significantly cannibalized the assets of the trust,” Sturgeon Lake Chief Sheldon Sunshine said in an affidavit.
Rath’s choice of credit union reveals a telling alignment of his political and economic beliefs.
Lawyer: Transactions make money difficult to trace
Bow Valley’s board includes several members associated with causes Rath has publicly championed, including separatism, anti-vaccine activism and support for the so-called “Freedom Convoy” in Ottawa.
The credit union’s president has publicly stated that it markets itself to Albertans who mistrust Canada’s federally regulated banks. Bow Valley keeps gold and silver in off-site vaults as a hedge against inflation, government mismanagement and a potential failure of the entire fiscal system.
In January 2024, Alberta’s credit union regulator told Bow Valley to stop undermining confidence in the federal banking system and warned that its precious metal purchases are not covered by provincial deposit guarantee legislation.
“I have not seen any lawyers that have precious metals on behalf of their client,” said Jerome Malysh, an anti-money laundering expert and former RCMP financial crimes investigator.
“What is the point of it here? You are there to hold trust funds and to preserve the asset. You are not there as an investment advisor to make money for your client. You are there to preserve your asset … so that is curious.”
Rath’s financial records show that after the initial purchase of $8 million in November 2025, he made two further bullion transactions totalling $3.4 million in February and March 2026.
In the first half of the same year, his account recorded 11 Silver Gold Bull deposits worth $4.8 million. Many of those deposits were followed by same-day drafts or withdrawals — including a $2.9-million deposit and withdrawal on the same day.
Banking records also show millions in transfers between his professional accounts and a numbered company he controlled.
“There are various transactions with that same precious metals provider, as Mr. Rath liquidates his position and deposits amounts into the account, and money appears to flow in and out in a way that is, frankly, difficult to trace,” Tallcree counsel Jessica Kras told an Aug. 5 court hearing.
“And intermingled with those transactions … there are several cheques and wire transfers made out of this account.”
Malysh said there should be a “bona fide economic purpose” for all interrelated or related-party transactions.
“I would be [suspicious of these transactions] for the sake of his fiduciary duty to his clients,” he said.
Bow Valley banking records reviewed by Global News show that funds also shifted from Alberta separatist-linked organizations to Rath’s credit union account.
In March 2026, Rath received $223,531.45 from the “Alberta Pros So,” a name that resembles the Alberta Prosperity Society. The society is the registered non-profit arm of the Alberta Prosperity Project (or APP), which Rath co-founded.
Another $65,000 marked “Legal Bill/Stay Free Alberta” was transferred to Rath’s account in June. Rath is Stay Free Alberta’s lawyer. Stay Free Alberta sponsored a petition to trigger a referendum on Alberta’s secession from Canada.
APP and Stay Free Alberta did not respond to questions from Global News.
Citing privacy rules, Bow Valley CEO Brett Oland declined to answer questions about Rath’s account and bullion purchases, but said the credit union meets the highest standards for tracking and reporting transactions.
Oland stated that Canada’s banking system is at risk of failing because the dollar is not backed by gold or silver.
“The fiat currency system and the value of the Canadian dollar are collapsing before our eyes.”
Silver Gold Bull managing partner Nikolas Morianos also declined to answer specific questions, citing legal and privacy obligations, but said the company “complies with applicable Canadian laws and regulatory requirements governing its business” and has “cooperated with lawful requests” related to the Rath case.
Liens on Rath’s assets revealed
Global News discovered two significant claims against Rath’s personal and professional assets.
In June 2020, a company called Vance SPV LLC registered a broad lien in Alberta against all of Rath’s and his firm’s present and future assets.
Global traced Vance’s origins to Delaware, where it was incorporated exactly one month earlier.
The state is a popular place to start a company because it offers privacy. It does not require businesses to disclose their directors, shareholders and executives. Anyone can launch a company in Delaware simply by clicking a button that says “Start a Delaware company now!” on a website.
Financial records show that in September 2024, Vance paid Rath PC $13,682.
Malysh said there are legitimate reasons a secured party might transfer money to a debtor, such as an additional advance or another transaction. He added that a security agreement is a consensual arrangement, which can be used to secure financing now or in the future.
Global was unable to determine who owned Vance or the purpose of the security agreement.
In November 2021, Rath and his wife registered a $10 million collateral mortgage in favour of his wife over their property near Priddis, about half an hour’s drive southwest of Calgary. A collateral mortgage allows a property to be used as security for a loan.
Global News asked two mortgage law experts to review the mortgage. Each explained that a collateral mortgage can serve a legitimate purpose, such as providing a line of credit. However, it could also be used to thwart creditors by granting a mortgage to a spouse when there is no legitimate debt on the property, putting it out of creditors’ reach.
Rath did not respond to questions about Vance or the collateral mortgage.
The timing of the June 2020 Vance lien and November 2021 mortgage registrations coincides with the period when both Nations say Rath’s financial reporting became less transparent. Tallcree alleges Rath stopped providing trust statements in 2020, and Sturgeon Lake says its last full audit covered 2021.
After a court forced the disclosure of up-to-date trust statements, Tallcree learned that Rath had taken more than $6 million from their trust, including more than $4 million in retroactive administration fees dating to 2017.
Sturgeon Lake alleges that RathPC paid itself $11.46 million in retroactive administrative fees. He is alleged to have taken nearly $575,000 from the trust to pay his own legal fees in the dispute over his contingency fee charges. Subsequent financial statements revealed further charges, bringing the total challenged withdrawals to about $12.8 million.
Rath argues that the trust agreement entitled his firm to charge the fees. In the Sturgeon Lake case, Rath told auditors he had reviewed administrative fees charged by similar trusts and his charges were “well within the range” of those fees.
Rath previously told Global News that the court action’s “only relevant issue” is that Sturgeon Lake’s trust permitted settlement and administration fees. That “was done and fully documented, disclosed, reported on and reviewed by the auditors,” he said.
In the face of the vast legal onslaught, Rath has signalled his intent to appeal almost every major ruling against him.
The lawyer is seeking to overturn his removal as Tallcree trustee and the temporary freeze on his assets, arguing that the expedited hearings were unfair and relied on unsupported or prejudicial material.
Despite the Law Society of Alberta hiring a lawyer to monitor the Tallcree and Sturgeon cases for a possible future investigation, he ignored its code of conduct — which advises lawyers against “intemperate” criticism of judges — and used a July 16 post on X to attack, by name, a judge who had ruled against him, while defiantly proclaiming the righteousness of his actions.
“Over the course of his career, Jeffrey Rath has created billions of dollars in wealth and economic opportunities for the communities that he served,” he wrote.
“THANK YOU TO ALL OF MY FRIENDS AND FELLOW ALBERTANS WHO HAVE EXPRESSED THEIR SUPPORT.
“This matter remains in active litigation every allegation of impropriety is disputed.”
Global continues with its subliminal messaging of “old white conservatives must be bad”.