Faced with the “very great difficulty” of reimbursing the Chinese donation of $550,000, the University of Montreal will keep the money in its coffers and use it to finance projects related to “knowledge of democracy” and mobility. international student.
The establishment says it has “assessed all avenues at its disposal” due to the “climate of uncertainty” generated by the allegations surrounding the promised donation of $ 800,000 – the last installment of which of $ 250,000 has not been received. – and his connection to the Chinese regime, in an alleged attempt at political interference.
The University of Montreal has come to the conclusion that a refund would potentially come up against significant pitfalls, in particular because the operation could go against the provisions of the income tax lawunderlines in an interview the rector of the establishment, Daniel Jutras.
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
The rector of the University of Montreal, Daniel Jutras
“We sought a legal opinion to determine under what conditions we could return the donation. To achieve this, it would be necessary to obtain a declaratory judgment from the Superior Court which annuls the donation, ”he explains. Thus, proof should be made that there are grounds for annulling it.
But the proof is not easy to find. It is in the hands, by hypothesis, tells us the Globe and MailCSIS [Service canadien du renseignement de sécurité]who is not going to share this evidence with us.
Daniel Jutras, rector of the University of Montreal
vain effort
As part of the same contract, Zhang Bin, one of the two donors whose link with the Chinese regime has been established, pledged to donate, through his company, Millennium Golden Eagle, $200,000 at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.
The latter, who ultimately received only $140,000, struggled to return the check to its sender, but finally did so last week. How is it that the University of Montreal did not succeed? “Each proceeds with the information at his disposal,” replies the rector.
He adds that the establishment tried to get in touch with Zhang Bin, in vain. “We tried to contact him to deny or confirm the allegations that we have been talking about for weeks, and we still have no answer”, indicates Daniel Jutras, who was not rector at the time when the agreement has been reached.
Emails from a bundle of internal documents obtained by The Press show that members of the board of directors of the Trudeau Foundation were concerned, at the beginning of April, of the impossibility for the organization to return the check to the company issuing the donation.
A different context
If the gift plunged the University into embarrassment, the Chinese check must however be given in its context, affirms Mr. Jutras. “It was nothing unusual. There was a lot of activity in the interactions between Canada and China, joint research projects, at the time,” he argues.
Since then, the situation has changed: Beijing has arbitrarily detained Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig for more than three years, and its actions threaten Canadian national security. So if Chinese donors approached the University right now, “we would be asking questions that we didn’t have at the time,” he says.
In addition, only four scholarships of $10,000 drawn from the Sino-Canadian Bin Zhang–Niu Gensheng Scholarship Fund, named in honor of the two Chinese billionaires, have been awarded to law school students. It was in 2018.
Since then, no other scholarship has been awarded, the number of candidates “being reduced” and “the pandemic having stopped international mobility”, indicates the University of Montreal, specifying that the balance of the fund today stands at $506,791.89.
The agreement, concluded in 2014 on the initiative of the Vice-Rector for International Affairs at the time, Guy Lefebvre, also provided for the erection, at a cost of $50,000, of a statue of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau on the grounds of his alma mater.
The project ultimately did not materialize. After evaluating the project, the invoice for which was just over $3,000 for a prototype commissioned from an Inuit artist, “it quickly became apparent that the amount would not cover the cost of erecting the statue, so the question did not arise”, explains Daniel Jutras.
With the collaboration of Katia Gagnon and Hugo Joncas, The Press