Lawyer for accused in MUHC trial wants charges stayed
The lawyer representing one of the accused in the so-called fraud trial of the McGill University Health Centre sought on Wednesday to have the criminal charges stayed against his client, arguing that Yohann Elbaz has faced unreasonably lengthy delays in the court proceedings.
Defence lawyer Walid Hijazi invoked a 2016 ruling by the Supreme Court in the Jordan affair that set strict limits on wait times for criminal trials.
Elbaz, a 39-year-old lawyer, was arrested in April 2013 in connection with the awarding of the $1.3-billion MUHC superhospital construction contract. Initially, he faced 16 criminal charges, but Crown prosecutors this year reduced that number to three: conspiracy, laundering the proceeds of crime and using false documents.
Yohann Elbaz is the brother of Yanaï Elbaz, an ex-manager of the MUHC, who is accused of fraud, taking bribes and money laundering, among other charges.
Yohann Elbaz will be tried separately from four other accused. Quebec Court Judge Geneviève Graton has set Oct. 1, 2018, as the start date for his trial, which is expected to last until Dec. 21 of next year.
In arguments before Graton on Wednesday, Hijazi appeared to distance his client from Yanaï Elbaz.
“I am not defending Yanaï Elbaz, I am defending Yohann Elbaz,” he told the judge.
The Jordan ruling by the Supreme Court set a maximum delay of 30 months from the time of an arrest to the completion of a trial. To date, Yohann Elbaz has waited 55 months.
Graton grilled Walid on several technical aspects of his motion in the morning, complaining at times that she did not understand the logic of his arguments.
“All is not white, all is not black,” the judge said.
The alleged MUHC conspiracy has been described by a provincial police detective as the “biggest corruption fraud in the history of Canada.” Former SNC-Lavalin CEO Pierre Duhaime and Riadh Ben Aïssa, who once served as a vice-president of the firm’s construction division, are accused of paying $22.5 million in bribes to win the contract to build the MUHC superhospital.
Graton has set Dec. 8 to hear counter-arguments by the Crown on Hijazi’s motion. In a lengthy court filing submitted before Wednesday’s hearing, lead prosecutor Nathalie Kléber acknowledged the delays, but attributed them to “the complexity of the file.”
The judge will then have up to three months to issue her ruling on the Jordan motion.
Stéphane Roy, a former financial controller of SNC-Lavalin, also faces charges in the case.