Lavalin accused of Libya bribe
Gadhafi’s son got $160M, RCMP say
The son of former dictator Col. Moammar Gadhafi was paid $160 million in kickbacks for steering major contracts in Libya to SNC-Lavalin, Canada’s biggest engineering and construction firm, police are alleging.
An RCMP search warrant document, obtained Friday by the National Post, said the bribes were paid to Saadi Gadhafi by Riadh Ben Aissa, who was then vice-president of Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin. Ben Aissa has since left the company and is now jailed in Switzerland.
In the sworn statement, the RCMP also implicated Ben Aissa and former SNC-Lavalin controller Stephane Roy in an alleged plot to smuggle Saadi Gadhafi and his family to Mexico as his father’s dictatorship in Libya was falling to NATO-backed rebels in 2011.
The 59-page RCMP statement was used last April 11 to obtain a warrant to search the Montreal headquarters of SNC-Lavalin. The partly-redacted version of the warrant application shows the investigation was focused on the company’s ties with the late Libyan leader’s playboy son.
Ben Aissa has denied any wrongdoing.
“We cannot determine the veracity of certain allegations in the affidavit,” SNC-Lavalin said in a release on Friday. “The affidavit is being closely reviewed to determine what course of action SNC-Lavalin may take as consequence.”
The RCMP document charts a financial web in which tens of millions of dollars flowed from SNC-Lavalin accounts in Canada and the United Kingdom to offshore companies controlled by Ben Aissa. From there, the money was allegedly transferred to other offshore companies controlled by Gadhafi.