Adscam Reaches Paul Martin's Office
By Captain Ed on Canada
Captain's Quarters
Testimony yesterday at the Gomery Inquiry put Adscam into the office of Prime Minister Paul Martin for the first time yesterday, as one of the aides working directly for Martin revealed that part of his salary was paid not by the government but a key Adscam figure. Gaetano Manganiello told Gomery that he was not the only one in the PMO who received money from Adscam contractors, either:
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Gaetano Manganiello testified that he was one of at least three party workers in the Quebec wing's Montreal offices in the late 1990s who were paid by Mr. Corriveau even though they did not work for his firm. Mr. Corriveau, a close friend of Mr. Chrétien and a key broker in the sponsorship affair, earned $8-million in sponsorship subcontracts, according to evidence presented at the inquiry.
Mr. Manganiello is on a paid leave from his job as a press office manager in the PMO. He is the first person working directly for Mr. Martin to admit to any direct role in the sponsorship affair -- though in a smaller fashion.
Documents tabled at the inquiry yesterday show that Mr. Corriveau's design firm, PluriDesign Canada Inc., paid Mr. Manganiello $4,846 in 1998 and $23,213 the next year.
Mr. Manganiello said he knew that another Liberal co-worker, Philippe Zrihen, was also getting a salary from PluriDesign while working for the party. And he testified that he had seen inquiry documents indicating that a third Liberal office employee had also been on PluriDesign payroll.
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Manganiello provides critical testimony. This establishes both a motive -- a perceived money crunch -- and a link for the corruption to the top of the Canadian government. No possible excuse can be made for a government contractor to make off-the-record payments to the aides to Paul Martin, except the intent to influence Martin and/or evade and obstruct political finance regulations. Corriveau, as a beneficiary of so many Sponsorship Program contracts, made sure that the money Martin's government gave him kept coming by keeping Martin in charge.
This should devastate the notion that Adscam originated and stayed with the Jean Chretien regime. Corriveau supposedly was Chretien's friend, not Martin's, but Pluri Design paid off Martin's office, not Chretien's, or at least not just Chretien's. The Liberals might still claim that Martin himself was not aware of this new graft, but that gets harder to sustain and increasingly becomes an irrelevant issue. Clearly, the PMO is Martin's responsibility, and it was his business to know that Corriveau cut checks to his direct employees. Manganiello drove around in a Dodge Caravan for months that Corriveau supplied -- it was hardly a secret that Pluri Design had bought these people.
For its part, the PMO has decided to praise Manganiello rather than bury him in an attempt to gloss over the explosive and damning revelation itself, and even give themselves credit for exposing the corruption:
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In a written statement yesterday, the PMO stood by Mr. Manganiello and praised him for his testimony. "We're proud of the honesty and directness Mr. Manganiello showed. . . . Hopefully, Canadians will see his appearance as evidence that this Prime Minister and this PMO are wholly committed to seeing the commission's work discharged successfully."
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Now that's chutzpah. The PMO didn't need Gomery to reveal that Pluri Design had paid the salaries of their employees, after all; they simply could have admitted that, either in Parliament or to the RCMP. It took over two years and an independent investigator to get that truth out to the Canadian electorate. That statement amounts to little more than an attempt to spin a catastrophe into something banal and unworthy of attention. The unfortunate part of Adscam for Canadians is that it truly may be all of the above.
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