Toronto Star, Nov 11, 2007 07:02 PM
Jim Brown, THE CANADIAN PRESS
OTTAWA - Liberal Leader Stephane Dion says he's finding it "very hard to believe" that Stephen Harper only found out last week about details of the controversial business dealings between Brian Mulroney and German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber.
In an interview Sunday on CTV's Question Period, Dion noted that government officials are now acknowledging Schreiber wrote a letter addressed to the prime minister in March outlining his past contacts with Mulroney.
Aides to Harper insist, however, that the letter never got beyond the Privy Council Office, which failed to pass it on to the prime minister last spring.
"There is a cover-up somewhere," Dion maintained. "I cannot believe it is the Privy Council Office, the most important authority of the civil service...
"The prime minister has to explain: What did he know, when did he know it?"
Harper announced on Friday he would appoint an independent third party to review issues raised by the affair and recommend whether further steps, such as a full-fledged public inquiry, are needed.
The move came after Schreiber filed an affidavit in Ontario Superior Court adding new allegations to an old dispute over $300,000 in cash paid to Mulroney after he stepped down as prime minister.
Schreiber now claims the deal was struck in June 1993, while Mulroney was still prime minister. He also claims a Mulroney adviser asked him at one point to transfer money related to the purchase of Airbus jets by Air Canada to a Swiss lawyer who represented Mulroney.
None of the allegations have been proven in court, and some of them contradict testimony Schreiber has previously given. He is currently embroiled in a civil suit with Mulroney, as well as fighting extradition to Germany on fraud and tax evasion charges.
Schreiber claimed as well, in his latest affidavit, that Mulroney was supposed to deliver a letter from him to Harper and discuss their business arrangements in the summer of 2006.
Harper has confirmed he met Mulroney that summer, but says he didn't get any letter and there was no talk of Schreiber during the get-together.
New questions surfaced on the weekend, when the Globe and Mail reported Schreiber had also written directly to Harper in March of this year. It was that letter Dion seized upon, demanding to know whether Harper had been aware of the brewing storm but kept quiet about it for seven months.
Sandra Buckler, the communications director for Harper, denied that was the case.
"Mr. Schreiber's letter was processed by the Privy Council Office and was not forwarded to the Prime Minister's Office," she said in an email Sunday.
She offered no further explanation except to say that PCO routinely handles all incoming mail for the prime minister.
Dion, for his part, urged Harper to call a full public inquiry now rather than wait for the matter to be reviewed by a third party.
"We need to know exactly what happened," the Liberal leader told CTV. "We are speaking about something that in a democracy should not happen – the possibility of a former prime minister receiving cash money from obscure services given by a business person who was in trouble with the justice system."
Mulroney has never publicly explained the nature of the business dealings that earned him $300,000 from Schreiber. Spokesmen for the former prime minister have insisted it had nothing to do with Airbus and related to other commercial ventures including a pasta business Schreiber was trying to start with Mulroney's help.
The RCMP and the federal Justice Department named Mulroney in a letter to Swiss authorities in 1995, suggesting he may have been involved in kickbacks arising from the Airbus transactions with Air Canada.
Mulroney sued for libel when the letter became public and won an apology and a $2.1 million settlement from the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien.
In a brief written statement last week, the former prime minister promised to co-operate with the third-party review announced by Harper but offered no further comment.
(Source: http://www.thestar.com/News/article/275533)
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