National Post (National Edition)
51/2-year sentence for taking $2.3M in bribes
MONTREAL • In Michel Fournier’s case, crime really did not pay.
The former head of the corporation that maintains Montreal’s 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 current resident of Victoria, B.C., pleaded guilty on Thursday to accepting bribes while working in Montreal for the federal government and to laundering the money 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 during 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.
Fournier and his ex-wife, Judith Barkley Fournier, 65, were charged in June, 2016, following an RCMP investigation dubbed Project Agrafe. Prosecutor Louis-Philippe Meek Baillot informed Quebec Court Judge Manlio Del Negro on Thursday that the charges against Barkley Fournier were being withdrawn.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 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.
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 created an offshore 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 noted 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 exwife 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.”
Fournier will likely be eligible for parole after he serves one-sixth of his sentence — 11 months — as his crimes were committed before 2011.
No one from SNC-Lavalin has been charged in Project Agrafe.