Monday, April 27, 2009

Mulroney didn't want cash made public..

This is hardly surprising! Mulroney is a good example of a successful politician managing to sue a panicky govt. for millions while at the same time not mentioning he had taken cash in envelopes from Schreiber supposedly for lobbying on behalf of the German arms dealer's clients. The Air Bus deal reeks of influence peddling. The one bright spot is that at least the Air Bus seems to be a decent plane !


Mulroney didn't want cash made public, probe told TheStar.com - Canada - Mulroney didn't want cash made public, probe told
April 24, 2009 Richard J. BrennanOTTAWA BUREAU
OTTAWA–Author William Kaplan said yesterday Brian Mulroney repeatedly tried to stop him from making public that the former prime minister took cash from arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber.
"Mr. Mulroney did not want the story of the cash payment to become public and encouraged me on a number of occasions not to report on that," Kaplan told a public inquiry probing Mulroney's 1993-94 business dealings with Schreiber.
Schreiber says he paid Mulroney $300,000 to lobby for a project to build German-designed military vehicles in Canada. He says the deal was struck just before Mulroney stepped down as prime minister. Mulroney has admitted taking $225,000 from Schreiber, but says he violated no federal ethics rules.
Federal lawyers at one time alleged that Mulroney and Schreiber were involved in a kickback scheme surrounding the 1988 purchase by Air Canada of Airbus jetliners. Mulroney successfully sued the then-Liberal government over that claim and was awarded $2.1 million in compensation in 1997.
Kaplan, a lawyer, has written two books about Mulroney – Presumed Guilty, published in 1998, and A Secret Trial, six years later.
The first portrayed Mulroney as an innocent victim with respect to the kickback allegations. But Kaplan said yesterday he followed it up with a book "to set the record straight" about Mulroney after he found out about the cash payments.
"When Mr. Mulroney was suing the Canadian people for $50 million ... he should have told us that he was taking cash in motels from Mr. Schreiber ... " he told Mulroney's Ottawa lawyer, Guy Pratte, yesterday, adding that he and Canadians were "duped."

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