Karlheinz Schreiber, Brian Mulroney, Airbus Affair

This is taken from the entry on Brian Mulroney, former Canadian Prime minister in Wikipedia. Recent Canadian news reports on the failure of Schreiber's appeal against being extradited to Germany seem somehow to have forgotten his relationship to Brian Mulroney. Maybe reporters fear that Mulroney will file a lawsuit and collect another mint.


Airbus affair
In 1997, Mulroney accepted a $2 million settlement to a lawsuit he had brought against the Government of Canada. At issue were allegations that Mulroney had accepted bribes in the so-called "Airbus affair" concerning government contracts. The government said the charges could not be substantiated. The principal RCMP investigator on the case resigned a year later. The government later dropped the investigation entirely.

But Mulroney's actions continue to be the source of controversy. After stepping down as Prime Minister, Mulroney accepted $300,000 in cash from Karlheinz Schreiber, a German-Canadian businessman. The cash changed hands in three meetings in hotels over an 18 month period, beginning in 1993. Schreiber had at his disposal $20 million from Airbus for the payment of secret commissions. CBC television reported on February 8, 2006[18] that the money Schreiber paid to Mulroney originated in a Swiss bank account code-named "Frankfurt" which Schreiber also used to pay the secret Airbus commissions. $500,000 was transferred from "Frankfurt" to an account in Zürich code-named "BRITAN" on July 26, 1993, from which withdrawals totalling $300,000 were made in 1993-4. But there is no evidence that Mulroney was aware of the source of the funds. Nor is there any evidence that Mulroney accepted bribes in the Airbus affair.

Through a spokesman, Mulroney said Schreiber paid him the money for consulting services to promote Schreiber's pasta business. In the February 2006 interview with CBC television, Schreiber scoffed at the claim, saying the only (pasta-related) service Mulroney ever performed was sending him a brochure. "What had he done for the money? Well, I learned to my great surprise that he worked with me on spaghetti." Schreiber said the money was a gift made to assist Mulroney in the transition to private life.

For many years, Mulroney did not acknowledge receiving money from Schreiber. The payments were not disclosed in Mulroney's lawsuit and Mulroney testified under oath that he "never had any dealings" with Schreiber and knew him only "peripherally". According to the February 2006 CBC article, "In 1999, a spokesman for Mulroney denied any money was exchanged. But in 2003, Mulroney indirectly acknowledged he did receive money from Schreiber but as payment for his help in promoting Schreiber's pasta business." In his 2004 book "A Secret Trial," former law professor William Kaplan describes Mulroney's testimony as evasive, incomplete and misleading -- but concludes that it did not rise to the level of perjury.

Schreiber is fighting extradition to Germany, where he is at the centre of a bribery scandal that helped bring down the government. Mulroney supporters question Schreiber's credibility. Mulroney said he was "as clean as a whistle" in accepting the payment because he declared the money and paid tax on it.