A former SNC Lavalin manager has to report to the

A former SNC Lavalin manager has to report to the penitentiary

Former SNC-Lavalin executive vice president Sami Bebawi failed to overturn the fraud and corruption conviction he received in 2019 related to the company’s activities in Libya. The Quebec Court of Appeals therefore ordered him to report to jail within 48 hours to begin serving his eight-and-a-half-year sentence.

Posted at 6:30 p.m

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Prosecutors’ theory in this case was that Sami Bebawi was involved in paying millions of dollars in bribes to Saadi Gaddafi, the son of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Incidentally, Sami Bebawi and one of his relatives are said to have received $26 million in embezzled funds in the early 2000s.

The victim of the fraud was the Libyan state, which had paid an inflated price for public contracts carried out by SNC-Lavalin.

Following a jury trial, Sami Bebawi was found guilty in December 2019 of fraud, bribing a foreign official, criminal money laundering and concealment. Judge Guy Cournoyer also imposed a fine of $24.7 million to be paid within six months.

The role of a lawyer analyzed

Mr Bebawi’s lawyers had put forward two main reasons for appealing the verdict. In particular, they disputed part of the investigation conducted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in this case. Police had conducted an infiltration operation on one of Mr. Bebawi’s Montreal attorneys, Me Constantine Kyres. Some communications from the latter had also been intercepted. Evidence at the trial showed Mr Kyres had offered a witness $10 million to change his story in Mr Bebawi’s case.

The Court of Appeal recognized that this part of the investigation violated attorney-client privilege and his privileged relationship with Mr Bebawi, but noted that an exception applies in this case because the attorney-client relationship “was part of the pursuit of a criminal purpose”. .

Mr Bebawi’s lawyers also asked for an automatic acquittal in certain fraud cases because they said there was no risk of economic loss for a company that had entered into an agreement with SNC-Lavalin in Libya and was cited as a victim. The Court of Appeal did not accept this argument. “In the end, the Libyan state was the primary victim,” underlined the verdict of judges François Doyon, Guy Gagnon and Christine Baudouin.

However, the court agreed to give the former executive vice president two years instead of six months to pay his fine.

pill difficult to swallow

At the end of his trial, Mr. Bebawi filed a written statement with the court highlighting the exceptional work done by SNC-Lavalin employees on the ground and regretting that certain officers were able to get away with this case without consequences.

“These employees have honored every assignment they have been given, often far from their families, in inhospitable countries for long periods of time. You deserve better. Rather, to date, they have seen several “untouchables” abandon ship without consequences. It must be a hard pill for them to swallow,” he said in his letter.