A judge on Wednesday approved the first-ever suspended prosecution agreement in a criminal case involving a Canadian company. Under this new procedure adopted by the Trudeau government, SNC-Lavalin will pay a $30 million penalty and avoid a criminal trial in connection with bribes paid to obtain a contract to repair the Jacques-Cartier bridge in early 2000s.
Posted at 2:44 p.m.
Superior Court Judge Éric Downs rendered his decision after hearing representations from the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP) and SNC-Lavalin lawyers. Everyone agreed that the use of this new provision was in the public interest.
The company admitted that between 1997 and 2004, the company paid approximately $2.35 million in bribes to Michel Fournier, who was then president of the Federal Bridge Corporation, in order to be favored for the award of a public contract that ended up totaling 128 million with all the extras that were added to the initial price.
Mr. Fournier has already admitted his guilt in this case and was sentenced to five and a half years in prison. Two former SNC-Lavalin executives are awaiting trial in the case and face jail time if found guilty. The deferred prosecution agreement, a procedure that applies only to “legal persons” such as companies, does not apply to them.
As soon as the charges were filed last September, the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP) declared that he was inviting SNC-Lavalin to negotiate a suspended prosecution agreement.
The fate of the top 37,000 employees
It was this kind of agreement that the company had tried unsuccessfully to obtain to avoid a criminal trial in the corruption case in Libya, which had caused a crisis within Justin Trudeau’s cabinet and led to the departure of former cabinet minister Jody Wilson-Raybould from the Liberal caucus.
Deferred prosecution agreements were introduced in Canada by the Trudeau government in 2018 through an amendment to the Criminal Code. Such agreements, which make it possible to sanction a company that admits its wrongdoing without having to go through a criminal trial and a court conviction, already existed in several countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, where they are commonly used. .
The fact of not receiving a criminal conviction also allows the company to avoid being excluded from certain public contracts. The two parties argued to the judge that SNC-Lavalin currently employs more than 37,000 employees in Quebec and elsewhere in the world and that it was necessary to consider the impact on them as well as on shareholders and retirees. The leaders who were in place at the time of the embezzlement exposed have all left the company and it has adopted a new, very restrictive code of ethics under the supervision of an independent examiner.
“We hope that the reparations agreement reached and approved by the Court will allow us to turn the page on these events dating from almost 20 years ago. Today, our employees know better than anyone how far we have come over the past few years to provide the company with a world-class integrity program,” said Ian L. Edwards, President and Chief Executive Officer. of the SNC-Lavalin group.
Good cooperation with the police
The judge took into account the fact that SNC-Lavalin cooperated with the investigation of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in this matter, in particular by handing over crucial documents which made it possible to follow the trace of the money.
” The report [avec la police] has been extremely positive, cordial and fruitful,” said Mr.and François Fontaine, of Norton Rose, who represented SNC-Lavalin with his colleague Mr.and Charles-Antoine Peladeau.
The deferred prosecution agreement formula worked well in this case, underlined the prosecutors of the DPCP, who say they hope that other business people who have had knowledge of wrongdoing in their business can have recourse to it by lifting the hand to report crimes.
“How many more should come and knock on our doors and those of the police forces? asked M.and Patrice Peltier-Rivest, who represented the Crown with his colleague Mand Francis Pilotte.