TOOK $2.3M IN BRIBES
Ex-bridge chief gets 51/2 years
In Michel Fournier’s case, crime really did not pay.
The former head of the corporation that maintains the Jacques Cartier and Champlain bridges pleaded guilty to accepting more than $2.3 million in bribes from SNC-Lavalin, the Montreal-based engineering firm, between 2001 and 2003. He was left with nothing to show for his crimes besides a 66-month prison sentence.
Fournier, 65, a resident of Victoria, pleaded guilty on Thursday to accepting bribes while he was a public official working in Montreal for the federal government and to laundering the money from those bribes between 2001 and 2009. According to a statement of facts read into the record at the Montreal courthouse, Fournier went through great lengths to hide where the $2.3 million came from. But he lost $1.5 million through risky investments, and the federal government is now able to confiscate more than $775,000 seized in an RCMP investigation in 2016.
From 1997 to 2004, Fournier was the president and director general of Federal Bridge Corp. and president of Jacques Cartier and Champlain Bridges Inc.
Quebec court Judge Manlio Del Negro agreed with a joint recommendation that Fournier be sentenced to a five-and-a-half-year prison term, and he was handcuffed and taken into custody.
He will likely be eligible for parole after he serves one-sixth of his sentence — 11 months — as his crimes were committed before 2011, when the federal Conservatives removed early parole eligibility from the Corrections and Conditional Release Act. Before the CCRA was amended, offenders serving federal sentences were eligible for early parole after having served one-sixth of their sentence — as opposed to one-third — if their crimes were non-violent and represented a first-time offence. In 2014, the Quebec Court of Appeal established that crimes committed before the change should be subject to the rules of the time.
Fournier and his ex-wife, Judith Barkley Fournier, 65, were charged in June last year, following an RCMP investigation dubbed Project Agrafe. Prosecutor LouisPhilippe Meek Baillot informed Del Negro on Thursday that the charges against Barkley Fournier were being withdrawn.
Fournier admitted to receiving the bribes to award a $127-million contract, in 2000, to a consortium led by SNC-Lavalin to replace the deck on the Jacques Cartier Bridge. The statement of facts read into the court record on Thursday leaves no doubt the bribes were paid by SNC-Lavalin.
“From Feb. 1, 2001, to Oct. 24, 2003, the evidence reveals that payments totalling $2,345,230 (Canadian) was paid by SNC-Lavalin to Michel Fournier in Swiss bank accounts,” the Crown said in the written statement.
No one from SNC-Lavalin has been charged in Project Agrafe and, when Meek Baillot was asked why by reporters outside the courtroom, he said he would not comment on “hypothetical” situations. At least four different former SNC-Lavalin executives face charges in five pending criminal cases at the Montreal courthouse. That includes three former executives who were charged in a case involving the $1.3-billion contract to construct the McGill University Health Centre.
Fournier retired in 2004 and, a few years later, apparently assumed it was safe to bring his bribe money back to Canada. To do this, he acquired a shell company in the Virgin Islands. “This company only existed to facilitate and conceal the monetary transfers from Switzerland to Canada, and it was dissolved after the (transfers) were finished,” the Crown said in its statement.
“The evidence also demonstrates that the Swiss funds were consolidated with a family inheritance received by the spouse of the accused, Judith Barkley Fournier.”
Meek Baillot said the Crown is no longer convinced “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Fournier’s ex-wife committed a crime.
When Del Negro asked Fournier if he was pleading guilty to the charges of his own free will, he replied: “Yes, your honour, and I regret my actions.” He later told the judge that such a crime “should never be pardoned.” Fournier told De Negro that his annual salary during the period he accepted the bribes was $180,000.
“You had a job that anyone would dream of having. You had prestige and financial security,” Del Negro said before sentencing Fournier. “You were ready to retire at 55 when many people have to work beyond the age of 65.
“I find this sad.”