Mulroney Insists He Never Received Kickbacks From Schreiber
Posted December 13, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
For four days Karlheinz Schreiber levelled accusations at Brian Mulroney over supposed business deals and kickbacks in front of a Commons ethics committee – on Thursday, it was the former Conservative prime minister’s turn to fight back.
Not mincing words, Mulroney told the committee that he never received kickbacks from the German-Canadian arms dealer and that his biggest mistake in life was ever agreeing to meet the man.
The ex-PM denied Schreiber’s allegation that the pair agreed to be business partners in a meeting that occurred in July of 2003, when he was still in office.
“Not a word was breathed at Harrington Lake about concluding any future business dealings with him,” Mulroney insisted.
At some point after Mulroney was no longer PM, Schreiber paid him $300,000 in cash. Mulroney said his first agreement with the man happened in August of 1993, when he accepted $100,000 cash as a retainer. He also claims he received $225,000 from the businessman, not $300,000 as Schreiber alleges.
“When I look back on it today, I made a serious error in judgment … even though it was decidedly not illegal to do so. I apologize and I accept full responsibility for it,” he said.
“This has been another very demanding and brutal time for my family and me. That mistake in judgment was mine alone,” he continued.
Mulroney also disputed Schreiber’s insistence that he never lived up to his end of the business deal, saying he lobbied both Russia and China on behalf of the German-Canadian’s company.
“If you were part of this get out of jail possibility, you’d be going down in flames. And he tried to take me go down in flames. And he’ll take anybody down,” he continued.
The former prime minister also called the Airbus affair “the biggest calamity of my life.” In that situation, the former PM was alleged to have accepted kickbacks in return for making sure Air Canada bought Airbus planes. Schreiber suggested Mulroney may have received commissions from other sources in connection with that affair, something the Justice Department looked into in 1995. That probe resulted in a libel suit against the government, over which Mulroney was eventually paid $2.1 million out of court.
According to a poll released this week more Canadians believe Schreiber’s side of the story than Mulroney’s.
