Showing posts with label conflict of interest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conflict of interest. Show all posts

Thursday, August 15, 2019

Justin Trudeau: Canada's Prince of Sleaze

Andrew Coyne: Conflict of interest is the least of concerns raised by SNC-Lavalin affair:

Conflict of interest, frankly, is the least of the concerns raised by this affair. There is a strong whiff, rather, of abuse of power and, possibly, obstruction of justice.

CBC: RCMP looking at SNC-Lavalin affair 'carefully,' promise to take actions 'as required'

The RCMP says it's reviewing the facts of the SNC-Lavalin affair "carefully" in the wake of a new damning report from the ethics commissioner that found Prime Minister Justin Trudeau violated the Conflict of Interest Act, following renewed calls from the Opposition to investigate.

John Ivison: PM's defence to ethics czar reveals his nasty political side

In mid-July, after Dion [Canada's Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner] had presented Trudeau with the evidence he had gathered in the SNC Lavalin investigation, the prime minister’s counsel made a written submission, that tried (and failed) to sway the ethics commissioner from finding him guilty of trying to further the interests of the Montreal-based engineering giant.

It was an ugly, mean piece of work that not only sought to portray former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould as over-wrought, irrational and incompetent, it also attempted to exonerate Trudeau from any inappropriate behaviour by his staff. ...

Dion resisted the urge to nominate Trudeau for a meritorious service medal and instead found him guilty of contravening section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act, which prohibits public officer holders from furthering the interests of people or organizations.

Wednesday, June 19, 2019

How Britain Wages War in Yemen

Philip May, husband of failed former UK Prime Minister, Thereason May, is a Senior Executive of Capital Group, a £1.4Tn investment firm which is the largest shareholder in Britain's largest defense contractor BAE Systems. BAE Systems, as it happens, has huge contracts with the Government of Saudi Arabia for the supply of weapons, equipment maintenance and the provision of engineers inside Saudi Arabia.

Thus, according to a Guardian report:

“The Saudi bosses absolutely depend on BAE Systems,” John Deverell, a former MoD mandarin and defence attache to Saudi Arabia and Yemen, told me. “They couldn’t do it without us.” A BAE employee recently put it more plainly to Channel 4’s Dispatches: “If we weren’t there, in seven to 14 days there wouldn’t be a jet in the sky.”

The British bombs that rain down on Yemen are produced in three towns: Glenrothes in Scotland, and Harlow and Stevenage in south-east England. Bombs roll off production lines owned by Raytheon UK and BAE Systems, firms contracted by the government to manufacture Paveway bombs (£22,000 apiece), Brimstone bombs (£105,000 apiece), and Storm Shadow cruise missiles (£790,000 apiece) for the Saudi Royal Air Force. BAE, under government contract, also assembles the jets that drop these bombs in hangars just outside the village of Warton, Lancashire.

Once these weapons arrive in Saudi Arabia, Britain’s involvement is far from over. The Saudi military lacks the expertise to use these weapons to fight a sustained air war – so BAE, under another contract to the UK government, provides what are known as “in-country” services. In practice, this means that around 6,300 British contractors are stationed at forward operating bases in Saudi Arabia. There, they train Saudi pilots and conduct essential maintenance night and day on planes worn out from flying thousands of miles across the Saudi desert to their targets in Yemen. They also supervise Saudi soldiers to load bombs on to planes and set their fuses for their intended targets.

Around 80 serving RAF personnel work inside Saudi Arabia. Sometimes they work for BAE to assist in maintaining and preparing aircraft. At other times they work as auditors to ensure that BAE is fulfilling its Ministry of Defence contracts. Additional RAF “liaison officers” work inside the command-and-control centre, from where targets in Yemen are selected.

Saturday, February 3, 2018

The Moral Legacy of Barry Sherman, a Canadian Tycoon

Barry Sherman was a gold-medal-winning engineering science graduate of the University of Toronto who received a doctorate in astrophysics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1967 her purchased the pharmaceutical drug manufacturing company, Empire Laboratories, from the estate of his maternal uncle, Louis Winter and wife Beverley, who, dying within 17 days of one another, had designated Barry Sherman as the executor of their estate. Thereafter, Sherman pursued a career in the drug industry that was both highly litigious and highly profitable. Selling Empire Laboratories, he shed financial responsibility for his cousins, the heirs of Louis Winter, and founded Apotex, a company engaged in the same business as Empire Laboratories, which grew to become Canada's largest producer of generic drugs.

On or about December 13th 2017, Sherman, by then a multi-billionaire and generous contributor to Jewish charities, together with his wife, Honey, died of strangulation at their home in Toronto's suburb of North York. Death was initially considered by police as a possible murder-suicide, but the story was changed to double homicide after Toronto's Mayor, John Tory, conveyed the Sherman family's concerns about the investigation to Toronto's Police Chief.