Government Operations Committee on May 12th, 2010

[Derrick Snowdy]

In the first phone conversation on the Thursday evening, April 8, I actually spent an hour just detailing with him the extent of Gillani's background. I will tell you exactly what I said to him. I said, “Among these crazy and outlandish claims he makes while soliciting business for his plans and schemes”—

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

We're talking about Mr. Gillani here?

[Derrick Snowdy]

That's correct.

The problem was that some of the most outlandish things he said were coming true. He would hit the craziest ones out of the park as being factual. He would say, “I'm doing business with Mr. Jaffer, and he's a partner.” Well, what do we know? We know that he did do business with Mr. Jaffer, or he was in a relationship.

He sent out a text message to someone on the night of September 12 saying, “I'm out to dinner with Rahim and his wife, the minister.” We went and checked, and sure enough, he was out with her. He'd indicated that he had connections to members of organized crime from the west coast; we made some inquiries and found out that he did attend a party in the company of some known members of organized crime out west.

He was already in very weird situations. His--

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

We are talking about Mr. Gillani.

[Derrick Snowdy]

Absolutely.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

How did this tie in with Mr. Jaffer or Ms. Guergis?

[Derrick Snowdy]

Mr. Jaffer is Mr. Gillani's business partner. They are in a business relationship. This comes back to Mr. Martin's question: this is an issue of optics. When the Minister for Status of Women is dining in a restaurant with a man awaiting trial on serious crimes and with a history of serious criminal activity, and the man is with an escort and is a business partner of Mr. Jaffer, given the recent attention she had received, you tell me how the Hill here would have responded to that photograph or that video showing up. You'd be back in it.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Were any allegations of a criminal nature discussed with Mr. Hamilton?

[Derrick Snowdy]

Do you mean allegations related to whom, ma'am?

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

I mean related to Mr. Jaffer and Ms. Guergis.

[Derrick Snowdy]

There were none related to Ms. Guergis, but I had serious concerns about the structure in which the deals were being negotiated with Mr. Jaffer and Mr. Gillani. They paid serious interest into schemes that I was familiar with.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Could you elaborate? What kind of schemes are you talking about?

[Derrick Snowdy]

During my career as an investigator, I've worked on some pump-and-dump and market manipulation scheme investigations, both with lawyers and with individual clients. Those are mostly found in what's known as Project Ora, Project Ora II, and Project Elden, which are the RCMP code names for those projects.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Are these the allegations that the RCMP is looking into?

[Derrick Snowdy]

I couldn't speak for the RCMP, ma'am. You'd have to ask Inspector Kueper.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Well, you have met with the RCMP. You gave them documents that you say are not yet in the public domain. Can you provide the committee with those documents?

[Derrick Snowdy]

I think I probably could get copies from Inspector Kueper, or retrieve—

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Ms. Mendes, you have one minute.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you very much.

Something that struck me from the interview you gave on April 28 was that you seemed to indicate you were aware that the Prime Minister was going to hold the press conference in which he was going to announce Minister Guergis's dismissal, if you wish, or resignation. How did you know about this beforehand?

[Derrick Snowdy]

On the morning of April 9, Arthur Hamilton phoned me and asked if I would come to his office to see him for a few minutes. I drove downtown; I went to see him. While I was sitting in his office, we spoke for about half an hour, at which point in time Mr. Hamilton said, “I've spoken about these issues with the Prime Minister. Obviously the minister has been under other scrutiny for the last 18 months with respect to her other conduct issues. When the Prime Minister leaves the Vimy memorial service today, he will be holding a press conference and announcing that he has accepted her resignation.” I thought this a strange fact. Recently everybody has been saying that he fired her, and in fact she resigned. I was told about 20 minutes before it happened.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

We now go to Monsieur Guimond.

Vous disposez de cinq minutes, s'il vous plaît.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Snowdy, following a series of questions that I put to Mr. Gillani in committee two weeks ago, the latter told us he wanted to file suit against us. Did he do so?

[Derrick Snowdy]

He has not done so that I'm aware of, but I welcome that opportunity.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Has he sought an injunction to prevent you from presenting the results of your research? He was categorical on the subject.

I was trying to understand. I asked him why had you made those revelations about him rather than taking an interest in me, for example. So he hasn't sought an injunction against you to prevent you from speaking.

[Derrick Snowdy]

I think Mr. Gillani has finally realized that while he was focused on me as an individual, he forgot that he presented this scheme in the company of others, and that attempting to restrict me in any way, shape, or form isn't going to do him a lot of good unless he enlists everyone else. When he presented the list of offshore companies, because we stepped aside while he did it to me, he forgot that he had done it 30 seconds earlier to a group of 10 people.

I think the other reason is that currently his lawyer, Mr. Michael J. Taylor, is serving his third suspension from the law society for failure to cooperate with an investigation. As far as I know, currently the only person he has representing him is a pet photographer.