On August 9, the BC Financial Services Authority (BCFSA) rescinded its order suspending the license and freezing the bank accounts of Rent It Furnished Realty, walking back the forceful actions it ordered more than two weeks previously, on July 25.
Shortly after the July orders, Rent It Furnished Realty retained former BC Attorney General Wally Oppal as its legal representative and accounting firm KPMG to conduct a third-party audit of its financials, calling the BCFSA's order "unnecessarily punitive and disproportionate."
That audit by KPMG has largely paid off.
"Since the Urgent Order was issued, RIF hired accounting firm KPMG Forensic Inc. and on Wednesday, August 7, 2024, RIF supplied BCFSA with trust reconciliations that show sufficient funds are in the accounts to cover trust liabilities," said the BCFSA in a press release on August 9. "As these records show that consumer funds are no longer at risk, BCFSA has unfrozen the trust accounts."
"The BCFSA has a legitimate role to protect the public, but this suspension didn't fit the circumstances and caused widespread disruption to the business and members of the public who depend on it," said Oppal, who also served as a BC Supreme Court & Appeals Court Justice for 25 years. "While Rent It Furnished had some administrative issues, the order was unnecessarily punitive, especially considering the business is classified an essential service. I am pleased the BCFSA took a second look and rescinded it."
Upon inquiry, the BCFSA declined to provide further comment.
In its July order suspending the license and freezing the accounts, the BCFSA acknowledged that it was not aware of any consumer complaints and the punitive actions appeared to be in response to the "administrative issues" Oppal alludes to.
Those issues included repeated discrepancies with its bookkeeping, with the BCFSA monitoring the company over a year before the license suspension, and Rent It Furnished Realty is not completely out of the woods yet, as a disciplinary hearing scheduled for November 12 remains in place and the company must still provide monthly trust reconciliations until then.
The rescinded orders, in other words, clears Rent It Furnished of misappropriating funds, but not of the bookkeeping issues.
"RIF was found to have committed professional misconduct between February 2017 and September 2020 and has been subject to a Consent Order since August 22, 2023," the BCFSA said on August 9. "RIF has been non-compliant with the terms of the August 2023 Consent Order, which required it to provide monthly reconciliations of its trust accounts. Multiple of these trust account reconciliations have been deficient, which led to the accounts being frozen."
"I am still numb from what happened because there was zero evidence of misappropriation of trust funds, which we fought relentlessly to prove," said Founder & CEO Erika Weimer. "Though the suspension was brief, thousands of our landlords and tenants were disrupted and had to seek temporary assistance outside of our company to pay and receive rent, and we were forbidden from tending to building maintenance emergencies."
Weimer said on August 9 that the company had resumed operations.
