Former top NDP staffer Heather Grant-Jury pleads guilty to fraud

Heather Grant-Jury, who once worked as a top aide to former premier Greg Selinger, has pleaded guilty to fraud.

She entered the guilty plea to fraud over $5,000 in provincial court on Tuesday. 

Between May 2011 and December 2015, Grant-Jury incurred personal charges on a credit card used for union educational business and expensed them to the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 832, according to an agreed statement of facts entered into court.

She was the director of education at the union's training centre at the time.  

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She lied to her employer by claiming personal expenses as business expenses and provided false information to the union accountant, court heard. 

She was charged last January. 

Grant-Jury was Selinger's principal secretary for a period of time at the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015. To take the job, she took a leave of absence from the union. 

She returned to the union but was quickly suspended in December 2015. The union conducted a forensic audit, which was turned over to police.

The union also informed then premier Selinger. His chief of staff demanded Grant-Jury's resignation from the NDP's re-election planning committee and from her seat on the board of Manitoba Public Insurance.

A hearing will be scheduled to argue before a judge how much money was involved in the fraud before Grant-Jury is sentenced. 

The Crown prosecutor said it was $160,000 and Grant-Jury should spend time behind bars, while her lawyer suggested it's significantly less and is asking for a non-jail sentence.