A scandal based on flimsy grounds

Three business executives have been acquitted on February 9 in a major foreign corruption case involving SNC-Lavalin Group Inc., known otherwise as the Padma Bridge scam, after an Ontario judge threw out wiretap evidence key to the case, saying the wiretap applications were based on gossip and rumour.

Justice Ian Nordheimer of the Ontario Superior Court ruled he had serious concerns about three applications the RCMP, a highly independent and respected organ of the Canadian federal government, filed in 2011 to get court approval to use wiretaps. The RCMP, had sought the approval as it probed allegations that SNC staff planned to bribe officials in Bangladesh to try to win a USD $50-million contract to supervise construction on the country's Padma Bridge project, an estimated USD $5 billion undertaking.

"Reduced to its essentials, the information provided in the [wiretap applications] was nothing more than speculation, gossip and rumour," Judge Nordheimer concluded. "Nothing that could fairly be referred to as direct factual evidence, to support the rumour and speculation, was provided or investigated. The information provided by the tipsters was hearsay (or worse) added to other hearsay."

The RCMP originally charged five people with corruption in

the case, but charges against two of the accused – Bangladesh born engineer Mohammad Ismail and Abul Hasan Chowdhury – were dropped on November 15, 2015. The case against the remaining three accused – former SNC vice-president of energy and infrastructure, Kevin Wallace, former SNC vice-president of international development, Ramesh Shah, and Bangladeshi-Canadian businessman Zulfiquar Ali Bhuiyan – ended Friday when Judge Nordheimer acquitted all three. The decision came after Crown attorney Tanit Gilliam elected to call no witnesses at the trial following the judge's decision to exclude wiretap evidence.

In his ruling, Judge Nordheimer said much of the information provided in the wiretap applications came from e-mails sent by three anonymous or unreliable tipsters. He said police had not attempted to first interview other sources, even though informants had named people they said police should contact.

The current piece is really a corollary piece to one I wrote for DS (September 13, 2012) involving the alleged 'conspiracy of corruption' that amounts to around 0.1 percent of the total cost of the abandoned project. Why did the issue receive so much prominence in the country's political arena and the media? The answer is that the plaintiff was the World Bank, the most powerful financial institution of the world, and the accused was the government of Bangladesh that represents 160 million people of a developing nation, which is not yet in a position to bid farewell to the 'Institution' that in many cases writes prescriptions to cure the economic illness of the poor nations, no matter how bitter the prescribed pill might test.

I believe there are not many in the country who were not aware of what was going on in the so-called Padma Bridge scam case. In my piece in DS, even though I am not a journalist, let alone an investigative one, I tried to dissect the fact from the fiction; most of which was circulating in the Bangladesh news media, apparently taking absolute advantage of the freedom of press without adhering to their obligations to speak the truth, both of which must go hand in hand in a democratic society. In fact, the concluding remark of my piece turned out to be prophetic as was evidenced from the proceedings of the pre-trial that I attended, which took place in a Toronto Court from April 8-19. The honourable court, at the onset of the trial, ordered complete media ban on the proceedings of the trial, which was once again re-emphasised by the honourable judge at the end, in response to my query, reiterating that the ban has no geographical boundary.

However, there were a handful of (Bangladeshi) media which were abiding by the order of the court, while the others were publishing unfounded speculations, quoting their known and unknown sources. There was an online tabloid which was ceaselessly publishing whatever it considered true and right. The whole case of the so-called 'corruption of conspiracy' lurked around a diary of one of the accused. I am one of the privileged ones who have seen the absolute contents of the page of the diary, the authenticity and validity of whose contents acted as a make or break outcome of the trial. In addition to a few other things, nothing could be further from the truth when it was reported that the pertinent page of the diary contained the signature of one of the accused, Kevin Wallace, the former Vice President of SNC. Simple common sense would conclude that one's personal diary would never contain the signature of his boss or colleague.

The RCMP initiated the whole episode at the request of the World Bank, by any stretch of imagination, neither a divine institution, nor is run by a group of angels. As I understood, the World Bank itself did not have a copy of the diary until the pre-trial began on April 8, 2012. In that likelihood, what was the basis of the World Bank's demand to ask the Bangladesh government and the ACC to indict the persons on the diary's list? The pre-trial although was for two former employees of the construction giant, but later on, its periphery got extended beyond them, since one of the accused Mohammad Ismail had little monetary disbursing authority, while the other, Ramesh Shah, could hardly commit any illegal international disbursement of this sort without the approval of his superior authority of the multi-billion dollar engineering giant.   

David Cousins, who represented Mr. Shah, said the RCMP clearly should have done more work to validate the credentials and credibility of the informants, observing that one of them turned out to be an employee of an SNC competitor who had lied in another matter."Mr. Shah has undergone a terrible ordeal over the past four years – he's been unemployable; he's had his passport seized from him," Mr. Cousins said. "His liberties have been really greatly impinged on."

Mohammad Ismail, the Bangladeshi born engineer who, until this case, had a bright career, told me how his life had been ruined by his sudden termination by SNC. Although he was acquitted on November 2015, he could not get a professional job since every organisation who considered him for appointment did not go forward due his connection with SNC and the case. How and who will rebuild the ruinations of their bright careers and compensate for the human sufferings and financial loss they have incurred through this long ordeal?

The writer is the Convenor of the Canadian Committee for Human Rights and Democracy in Bangladesh.