A son of deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi allegedly received 120 million euros ($162 million) in bribes for giving major contracts in Libya to SNC-Lavalin Inc , Canada's biggest engineering and construction company, a police document released yesterday shows.
According to an affidavit the Royal Canadian Mounted Police used to obtain a search warrant at SNC's head office last April, the bribes were paid, in a roundabout way, to Saadi Gaddafi by Riadh Ben Aissa, a vice-president at Montreal-based SNC at the time.
“It is alleged that these sums of money were paid as compensation for having influenced the granting of major contracts to SNC-Lavalin Int.,” Cpl. Brenda Makad, a member of the RCMP’s Ottawa-based anti-corruption squad, wrote in the French-language sworn statement.
For example, she wrote, SNC-Lavalin had transferred $11.4-million Euros and $1.65 DEM to a bank account in Malta. The funds were then transferred to accounts in Geneva, Milan and Malta held by a company called Dorion Business Ltd., which was controlled by Gadhafi. The transfer was labelled, “Consultant commissions paid by the Societé Canadienne S&C Lavalin.”
In one instance, SNC-Lavalin allegedly transferred $16-million into an account at Fimbank First National in Malta. From there the money was sent to Geneva’s Crédit Agricole and the Arab Banking Corp. in Milan, Italy.
The 59-page RCMP statement was released by the courts at the request of three Canadian newspapers, the Globe and Mail, the National Post and La Presse.
In an allegation based on information from Swiss anti-corruption investigators, Makad said SNC-Lavalin paid the money to offshore companies belonging to Ben Aissa, and the money was then transferred to offshore companies controlled by Saadi Gaddafi. Some money was used to buy yachts for the son of the slain dictator, the RCMP statement alleged.
SNC, which has said that any wrongdoing was the work of a small number of former employees, said it was seeing the affidavit for the first time and had not been aware of some of the information it contained.
"We cannot determine the veracity of certain allegations in the affidavit," SNC said in a statement. It said it was eager for the situation to be resolved and would do everything it could to help the authorities rapidly get to the bottom of those issues.
In the affidavit, Makad said an RCMP investigation had shown there was a genuine friendship between Saadi Gaddafi and Ben Aissa.
Ben Aissa left SNC in February last year and is now in jail in Switzerland after being arrested on suspicion of money laundering.