Information & Ethics Committee on Dec. 11th, 2007

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

What you're suggesting, then, is that Frankfurt would receive through IAL money from the MBB commissions, from the Airbus commissions, from Thyssen commissions, and they would not all have gone from Frankfurt necessarily to GCI. Some may have gone to the principals of GCI directly?

[Karlheinz Schreiber]

Yes, there were requests to transfer the funds to other companies where, for example, all the shareholders had sent finally direct invoices not related to the projects and the money was sent to them. Others were of course demands for cash transfers, the handout of cash, which I then withdrew and handed out. Yes, it was quite different.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

So some invoices exist.

[Karlheinz Schreiber]

Yes.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Do you have copies of those invoices?

[Karlheinz Schreiber]

I saw them in one of the files from my lawyers, and I think it's also in the documents from The Fifth Estate, which say that money went from Merkur, a company in Lichtenstein, to Frank Moores, Gary Ouellet, Fred Doucet, Gerry Doucet. I think it's all there. I may even have seen it there and not in the other documents.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Would these invoices, as they exist, equal the total of the commissions—the $20 million from Airbus, the $4 million from Thyssen? I don't know what the commissions from MBB were. Would invoices exist to cover all these amounts?

[Karlheinz Schreiber]

No.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

So some transfers were done without invoice.

[Karlheinz Schreiber]

At the beginning, I told you—and this was a big headache for me—there were these constant fights between the Doucets, Frank Moores, and Gary Ouellet on the funds.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

When you determined that you could, in your words, “work with Mr. Mulroney” and you gave him $300,000, you said it was for two purposes. One was that because of the work he had done on the unification of Germany, you wished to work with him. The other was that he could have use in the future for you, with Kim Campbell and also on the international level, if I remember correctly.

[Karlheinz Schreiber]

Yes, but we have to separate this. When I spoke to you, I spoke about reasons. One was an emotional thing, to say I have to help him or say thank you somehow by helping him for the reunification support he gave. That's one thing; it had nothing to do with business, and I didn't pay him for that. But that was one of the reasons motivating me to ask him to do business together.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

So the $300,000 or $500,000 that you had available was to—

[Karlheinz Schreiber]

It was exclusively for the Bear Head project.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Exclusively for the Bear Head project—

[Karlheinz Schreiber]

At the beginning.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

And this was the Bear Head project in which the client you would have been working with would have been Thyssen.

[Karlheinz Schreiber]

Yes.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Was Thyssen aware that Mulroney was working on that project, that you had entered into an agreement with Mulroney to work on that project?

[Karlheinz Schreiber]

Yes, I think so.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Was he in regular contact with Thyssen? Did he report to them? Did he report to you?

[Karlheinz Schreiber]

No. I understand that nothing happened before the election, because everything was somehow focused on the October election and on the Conservatives winning another majority government. Since the Liberals then won the election, the Thyssen people consequently dealt with Marc Lalonde, mainly on their projects in Quebec, and met with officials there. This was directly between Thyssen and Marc Lalonde.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Thyssen and Marc Lalonde. Mulroney was not working on that file at that time?

[Karlheinz Schreiber]

Not to my recollection. I didn't speak to him, because I was not involved any more. And you can understand, after the brutal fights I had with the Canadian government because of the threat to the lives of the Canadian soldiers, I was not in a position to go to the Liberals and negotiate, even though they were quite some friends of mine from the Atlantic Bölkow.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

So who at Thyssen would Mulroney have been in contact with?