SNC warned of lost jobs, U.S. move, docs show
SNC-Lavalin warned federal prosecutors last fall about a possible plan to split the company in two, move its offices to the United States and eliminate its Canadian workforce if it didn’t get a deal to avoid criminal prosecution, newly obtained documents show.
The documents, part of a Power Point presentation obtained by The Canadian Press, describe something called “Plan B” — what Montreal-based SNC might have to do if it can’t convince the government to grant a so-called remediation agreement to avoid criminal proceedings in a fraud and corruption case related to projects in Libya.
Under that plan, SNC would move its Montreal headquarters and corporate offices in Ontario and Quebec to the U.S. within a year, cutting its workforce to just 3,500 from 8,717, before eventually winding up its Canadian operations.
“The government of Canada needs to weigh the public interest impact of the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin,” the presentation reads.
“We must humbly ask whether the public interest is served to prosecute SNCLavalin, and to try to achieve a guilty verdict. Such a decision would effectively lead to the end of SNC-Lavalin as we know it today and has been for more than 100 years.”
Of all the options for the future of the company, the plan in the presentation was the “most obvious” to follow and “well advanced” in terms of planning, say the documents, which the Privy Council Office confirmed receiving late last year.
The details appear to contradict public statements by chief executive officer Neil Bruce, who has denied both that the company threatened to move its headquarters, and that the company cited its some 9,000 Canadian jobs as a reason the construction giant should be granted a remediation agreement.
The company walked back the comments days later in a statement, saying a remediation deal was the best path to protect its Canadian workforce.
SNC-Lavalin spokesman Nicolas Ryan confirmed the authenticity Thursday of what he called a “confidential document” that was submitted to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada to allow the director of public prosecutions to consider the company’s request for an agreement.