Mulroney feasts
on bribes
while Tories look the other way
Few things are less curious than the Tories’ complete lack of curiosity regarding Brian Mulroney’s acceptance of $300,000 in bribes from Karlheinz Schreiber and perjury about the same. After all, what’s the percentage in besmirching the grand old man of the party and éminence grise to the prime minister.
It’s been almost a year since Schreiber admitted on the Fifth Estate that he’d handed a huge wads of cash to the ex-prime minister in sleazy hotel-room assignations.
Mulroney had first denied, under oath, any dealings with the Airbus fixer. Then he insisted that it was compensation for help with Schreiber’s pasta business, a claim laughingly rubbished by Schreiber on the Fifth Estate.
“Well, I learned to my great surprise that he worked with me on spaghetti,” Schreiber cackled, noting that the sum of the ex-prime minister’s ravioli wrangling was sending him a brochure from Archer-Daniels-Midland.
“Maybe it’s a pretty expensive brochure,” he har-de-harred.
Amid all the hilarity, sadly, Schreiber managed to avoid answering the question: just what did Mulroney do for his three hundred large?
As reported in The Globe and Mail January 24, after the interview aired, Justice department representatives looked into canceling the government’s $2 million libel settlement with Mulroney for having correctly (as it turned out) accused Mulroney of taking bribes from Schreiber in the airbus deal.
“If the government entered into
the settlement on the basis that it wrongly alleged that Mulroney received cash
from Schreiber out of certain Swiss bank accounts, it shouldn’t be surprising
that it wanted to review the settlement — now that it was clear Mulroney did
receive the money,” an anonymous department representative told the Globe.
But the legal action — surprise, surprise — never went ahead. So, who kyboshed the kyboshing ?
A department mouthpiece told the Globe the decision was made “at the level of deputy minister John Sims.” Odd phrasing is that. Is that in any way similar to saying Sims made the decision?
Of course, at that particular juncture, deputy ministers, after more than a decade of Liberal rule, were being rigorously re-evaluated by the Tory transition team, led by Mulroney hatchetman Derek Burney. Those found wanting (step forward Samy Watson and Rob Fonberg) were summarily removed. Sims, however, managed to keep his post, no doubt testament to the quality of decisions being made at his level.
Why did Schreiber finally decide to go on camera and dish the dirt on the Mulroney payoff?
Sources familiar with Schreiber said he was stung by Mulroney spokescreep Luc Lavoie’s description of him as “the biggest fucking liar in the history of the world,” which might have struck some as a bit of false modesty on the part of the talented Lavoie.
But it’s more likely Schreiber, unimpressed with the prospect of a lengthy prison sentence at age 72, is signaling to Canadian authorities he wants to make a deal. His main bargaining chip? He knows where all the money went.
Of the $10 million or so in artificial sweetener Schreiber is alleged to have brought into Canada, close to half went into fees for folks like the late Frank Moores, who lied shamlessly about lobbying for Airbus, and to his cronies, like Gary Ouellet and the Doucet brothers — Fred and Gerry.
Let’s not forget that Trudeau cabinet minister and Schreiber lawyer Marc Lalonde also received $300,000 from the same funds, in an envelope called “Marc.” It was Lalonde and Elmer MacKay who posted Schreiber’s bail in ’99 (Elmer’s boy, of course, is Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay, lately embarrassed by pater’s use of his constituency office to send faxes to Schreiber.
Then there was the $300,000 for
Mulroney, and the pile that went to former Air
What happened to the rest,
perhaps as much as $5 million in Schreiber’s fascinating “Canadian funds”
account? Surely it couldn’t have found its way into the Gucci billfold of Marin
Brian Mulroney, 18th prime minister of
Surely.
With notes from Frank
Magazine.
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