Executive in fraud case says he lost wife, home

Former VP at SNC-Lavalin says he’s a ‘scapegoat’

MONTREAL• Sam iAbd ellah Be bawi,71,a former executive vice- president with SNC- Lavalin, became emotional on Friday while testifying before Superior Court Justice Guy Cournoyer about the hardships he has experienced since he was charged with fraud in 2014.

He said his wife left him, his family rarely contacts him, he was forced to sell his home, his access to his savings were cut off and he recently underwent a painful procedure to treat cancer in his tongue and throat.

He also accused the prosecution of having buried him in “a mountain of documents” when it turned over its evidence to him. He said t hey provided him with documents they gathered in another investigation, of SNC- Lavalin itself, and that it took him five months, working alone in an office, to separate which evidence was pertinent to his case.

He referred to himself as being SNC- Lavalin’s “scapegoat” and that his social network has evaporated because of it. He became emotional when prosecutor Richard Roy asked him to confirm whether SNC-Lavalin is suing him and other former executives for $127 million.

“They caused it. They are the corrupter,” Bebawi alleged.

His defence lawyer asked the judge on Friday to throw out the case because it has taken too long to get to trial. Bebawi testified in support of that motion.

He was charged in February 2014 with fraud over $ 5,000, two counts of laundering proceeds of crime, four counts of possession of property obtained by crime and with bribing a foreign public official. The charges are connected to deals Lava- lin made with the Libyan government.

Bebawi was an SNC-Lavalin vice-president from 2000 to 2006 and he stayed on as a consultant until 2011. During that time he made, on average, $1 million annually.

“Everyone else ( investigated by SNC-Lavalin) is living with their families and I have to live with this (stress) every day. It destroyed me,” Bebawi said, adding he is so isolated from his family that when one of his daughtersin- law became pregnant no one told him.

While recalling another example of the alienation he has experienced, Bebawi said he approached his granddaughter at a family gathering and asked her: “Do you remember me? She said, ‘yes but why don’t you visit us?’ ”

“Christmas used to be about preparing meals for 20 to 30 people,” Bebawi added later. “( Recently) at Christmas I spent four days alone in front of the television.”

The engineer also said the notoriety of his case has followed him as he tried to get back on his feet financially. He said a bank set up obstacles when he tried to access funds from his RRSP and his hopes of returning to teach at Concordia University came to an abrupt end when an official at the school told him: “The media coverage ( of his case) does not allow us to take you back.”

Bebawi said he has been pushing his lawyers to “get this over with” and claims the prosecution has been stalling through tactics like handing over evidence that did not pertain to him.

The prosecutor argued that the Crown was required by law to hand over everything it did to Bebawi. Roy also pointed out that the prosecution was ready to go ahead with a trial in February, but that Bebawi’s lawyer, Alexandre Bergevin, turned it down because he wanted to present the motion he argued before Cournoyer on Friday.

Cournoyer is scheduled to deliver his decision on April 6.