Besieged by workers and the CRA, this once-mighty translation agency is facing financial ruin

Facebook
Twitter
Reddit
LinkedIn
Email
Able Translations owes nearly $1M to creditors around world, as its cheques bounce and interpreters sue
Zach Dubinsky, Declan Keogh · CBC News · Posted: Feb 13, 2019 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: 8 hours ago

Annabelle Teixeira and husband Wilson, the owners and executives of Able Translations, are being personally pursued by the Canada Revenue Agency, as their company fails to pay an array of creditors. (Annabelle Teixeira/PremioDiaspora/Facebook)
146 comments
Creditors besieged its bank account. The CRA obtained seizure orders for its assets and put liens on its president’s home and luxury cars. Its biggest clients have walked away. And more than 200 people have sued for nearly $1.8 million in unpaid earnings and other damages.

Able Translations was once one of the biggest companies of its kind in Canada, landing contracts over the last two decades to provide medical interpreters for Alberta and Ontario hospitals, document translation for Fortune 500 firms, and language services to every level of government.

It functioned as an agency, subcontracting the work to hundreds of people fluent in everything from Albanian to Urdu. Portuguese-born Wilson Teixeira, Able’s founder and president, could often be seen networking with top municipal, provincial and Portuguese politicians.

But in the last five years, Ontario-based Able has racked up a global trail of debts, according to a CBC investigation that has revealed, for the first time, the vast extent of the company’s financial delinquency — and its machinations for dealing with it.

Court and financial records, company emails, and interviews with more than 50 translators — overwhelmingly immigrants — show Able has bounced at least two dozen cheques, defaulted on dozens of court orders, possibly misrepresented facts in court testimony and broken a litany of promises to pay its freelancers.

“I couldn’t believe this was happening in Canada,” said Olga Angel, a Spanish-language interpreter who freelanced for Able for half a decade until, she said, it became like pulling teeth to get paid. “You’re so helpless.”

Able’s office, in a business park in Mississauga, Ont., is closed to visitors except ‘by appointment only,’ according to a sign posted in the window. An employee inside wouldn’t answer the door when CBC stopped by recently. (Martin Trainor/CBC)
From 2014 to 2017, the company brought in more than $4.7 million just from contracts with governments and taxpayer-funded agencies, CBC has learned.

While it’s unclear how much of that has gone to the company’s owners personally, they own an $800,000 home, a second 50-acre property in the countryside and two high-end vehicles the Canada Revenue Agency is going after — a Lexus and a Mercedes SUV. Meanwhile, hundreds of workers have come forward with lawsuits and labour-ministry complaints saying they haven’t been paid.

Eva Halczynska, a Polish interpreter from Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., said she happily freelanced for Able for more than a decade until, roughly four years ago, the cheques stopped coming. She went a year without getting paid. “It’s disgusting … This is an absolutely horrible company to work for.”

The Able case, labour advocates say, highlights the growing problem of work in many sectors being farmed out to freelance contractors, who don’t fall under employment laws that, for example, allow government to step in and force a company to pay its staff their wages.