Panama Papers: SNC-Lavalin paid secret commissions to offshore companies for contracts in Algeria
The Panama Papers contains contracts signed with a mysterious company in the British Virgin Islands that resemble those that led to bribery charges for work in Libya.
Canadian engineering giant SNC-Lavalin signed $21.7 millions in contracts with an anonymously owned company in the British Virgin Islands to obtain business in Algeria, a joint investigation by the Star and CBC/Radio-Canada has learned.
The Panama Papers archive contains six contracts, signed between 2000 and 2002, offering an unnamed agent payments ranging from $800,000 to $8.4 million if SNC-Lavalin were to be awarded public infrastructure projects such as the renovation of a hotel and the construction of a natural gas plant.
While the contracts include anti-corruption clauses and explicitly prohibit any payment to foreign public officials, neither SNC-Lavalin nor Michael Novak, the ex-executive who signed some of them, knows who received the money.
Buried among 11.5 million documents in the database of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, the contracts show how shady consultants were paid to secure deals beyond Libya, where the Quebec-based company paid millions in commissions that landed a former executive in Swiss prison for fraud, corruption and money laundering.
SNC-Lavalin is now suing that former employee, Riadh Ben Aissa, and another, Sami Bebawi, for $127 million, alleging they set up offshore companies and used SNC-Lavalin’s Libyan commissions to pay bribes and enrich themselves and their families. Both men are now back in Canada, where they face criminal fraud charges, Bebawi for the Libyan payments and Ben Aissa for his role in the Montreal McGill University hospital scandal.
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