Guite Sentenced To Prison In Sponsorship Scandal
Posted June 19, 2006 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
He headed up the sponsorship program that cost Canadian taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, and on Monday Chuck Guite learned his punishment.
The retired civil servant will spend three-and-a-half years in prison for his role in the fraud scandal, which came to light in February of 2004 in a report by Auditor General Sheila Fraser.
Fraser slammed the Liberal government for mismanaging the program, which saw exorbitant amounts of cash flow to Liberal-friendly ad firms for little or no work.
Quebec Superior Court Justice John Gomery was appointed to head up an inquiry into the scandal by then-prime minister Paul Martin, and the judge’s findings and recommendations were released late last year and early in 2006. They called for, among other things, more accountability in government.
A Quebec judge sentenced 62-year-old Guite after the Crown and defence suggested jail terms ranging from two to four years.
A jury convicted Guite of funneling $2 million through five contracts to an advertising agency in Montreal. He defended himself in the case, but ended up with the longest sentence of the three defendants handed prison time for defrauding the government.
Groupaction Marketing president and founder Jean Brault was sentenced to two-and-a-half years after pleading guilty for the same five contracts, and advertising executive Paul Coffin, former head of Coffin Communication, received an 18-month jail term after pleading guilty to bilking Ottawa of $1.5 million.
