Schreiber ready to take stand at federal inquiry

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/04/2009 (6226 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

By Norma Greenaway

OTTAWA — Free on bail and facing deportation to Germany over corruption charges, Karlheinz Schreiber this week begins possibly his last chance to expose what he insists is a sweeping political scandal that goes beyond the narrowly-focused federal inquiry into the cash payments he made to Brian Mulroney.

The German-Canadian lobbyist and deal-maker will take the stand at the inquiry being conducted by Justice Jeffrey Oliphant into the “business and financial dealings” between Schreiber and the former prime minister.

Schreiber, 75, says he’s ready, rested and keen to tell his story.

“I have fought for this for many years, and I will do my best,” he said in a telephone interview with Canwest News Service.

He was referring to his long-standing pleas for a public inquiry into the behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing by politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists and others over projects he was promoting, among them a $1.8-billion sale of 34 Airbus planes to Air Canada in 1988 and a proposal — known as the Bear Head project — to build light-armoured vehicles for the Canadian Forces in Canada.

Schreiber said he still clings to the hope the inquiry will unearth enough new evidence to warrant an investigation by the RCMP and possibly the laying of criminal charges.

“We all know it (the inquiry) is not a trial or a criminal case,” he said. “But when you have an inquiry, you never know when it starts where it will go.”

Mulroney has admitted making mistakes in judgment, but he has denied any wrongdoing and has depicted Schreiber as a desperate man. “He will say anything, sign anything and do anything to avoid extradition,” Mulroney told the Commons Ethics Committee in December 2007.

Testifying before the ethics committee, Mulroney publicly acknowledged for the first time, that he had accepted $225,000 in cash-stuffed envelopes from Schreiber during three meetings in 1993 and 1994. Schreiber says it was $300,000.

Mulroney also said he did not declare the income to Canadian tax authorities until he made a voluntary disclosure in 1999 after learning of Schreiber’s legal problems in his native Germany. Schreiber stands charged of bribery, fraud and tax evasion.

Testifying before the same committee, Schreiber left the impression he was saving his most damning material for the public inquiry, which the prime minister had agreed to call the previous month.

Schreiber maintained the suspense in the interview, saying he had submitted new and significant documents but that he couldn’t talk about their content because he had signed a “confidentiality agreement” with the commission. “My lips are sealed,” he declared.

True to form, though, he couldn’t resist mentioning one document, which, he said, was found a month ago by his former secretary at her home in Germany.

Schreiber said it was a 1983 telegram to him from the late Frank Moores, a former premier of Newfoundland and friend of Mulroney’s who, as chairman of Government Consultants International, lobbied the Conservative government on behalf of Airbus. “I couldn’t believe it,” Schreiber said of his secretary’s find.

Questions have long swirled around the 1988 Airbus sale to Air Canada. Among them, who was it who benefited from the $20 million in secret commissions Airbus paid to Schreiber?

One of the few points of agreement between Mulroney and Schreiber is that none of the Airbus money went to the former prime minister.

— Canwest News Service