Karlheinz Schreiber Category Archive

Dr David Johnston has recommended that any inquiry into the business relationship between Brian Mulroney and Karlheinz Schreiber be limited in scope and out of the public eye.

This has generated an entirely predictable response from the Liberal Party.

Now that the CBC has admitted that one of its reporters, Krista Erickson, had indeed colluded with two Liberal MPs to direct the questioning of former prime minister Brian Mulroney, who was appearing in front of the Commons ethics committee investigating allegations made by Karlheinz Schreiber, the question remains.

Can this committee carry on?

Now that the committee is requesting access to Brian Mulroney tax returns, the answer has to be a limited "No".  Would you want your tax returns handed over to CBC reporters?

This is pure supposition, of course, but I've been thinking about the collusion between CBC reporter Krista Erickson and Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez to use a Commons ethics committee hearing as a proxy for a CBC interview studio.

The Conservatives and others demanded that the CBC make the details of their investigation public.  The CBC has done that, to a point, revealing the name of the reporter who colluded with the Liberals, and detailing her punishment.  Krista Erickson has been reassigned to Toronto from Ottawa.

Some think the Conservative government put the screws on the CBC.  Nonsense.  If you think about it, the CBC had every reason to come clean and make it all public.

Krista Erickson's career as a CBC reporter has taking a blow.  She has been taken off the Ottawa beat as punishment for having worked with Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez in an attempt to make the Commons ethics committee into a means for the CBC to compel answers posed by its reporters.

Pablo Rodriguez, for his part, denies everything, and moreover, insists that actions taken by the CBC against Krista Erickson cannot be of interest to him.

Jason Cherniak, Liberal blogger and apologist for all things Liberal, has taken a different approach, and is agitating in support of Erickson.

Got that.  The Liberal MP at the centre of this controversy says CBC actions are of no interest, because he is not involved.  Jason Cherniak disagrees, and thinks the CBC actions need to be challenged.

Jason Cherniak disagrees!

Who woulda thunk it?

Now that the CBC has identified the reporter who wrote the questions for Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez to ask at Commons ethics committee hearing into the business dealings between Karlheinz Schreiber and Brian Mulroney as Krista Erickson, it is curious to hear what Pablo Rodriguez has to say.

Remember, the CBC has already declared that Krista Erickson broke the rules, and the CBC has already punished her.  She has been reassigned to Toronto from Ottawa.  For the CBC there is no question, therefore, that Krista Erickson did exactly what had been alleged, and that is write questions for Pablo Rodriguez to repeat like a trained seal at the hearing.

Krista Erickson has been taken to the woodshed over this.  So what does Pablo Rodriguez do?  He denies everything.

He's hiding behind her skirts, as they would have said long ago, a time when being a gentleman meant something.

The CBC has responded to the Conservative Party on the question of collusion between a CBC reporter and the Liberal Party.

The CBC has named the reporter.  It is Krista Erickson.

The CBC has issued a punishment.  She has been pulled from covering Ottawa and has been reassigned to Toronto.

The CBC agrees that the reporter acted unethically.  And the Liberal Party...?

What we don't know is if the Liberal Party is sticking to the line that there was no collusion.

The absurdity to which we've been subjected to -- namely watching Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez humiliate himself and his party by being exposed as a CBC reporter wannabe when it was revealed that his job at the Commons ethics committee was to read as clearly as possible the words written down on paper by CBC reporters -- is even worse when you realize that the goal of this silliness, that is, to embarrass Stephen Harper, is a fool's errand.

I guess that's the Liberals are perfect for the job.

In following the story of how an unnamed CBC reporter wrote questions for Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez to deliver at the Commons ethics committee hearing question Brian Mulroney in the Karlheinz Schreiber affair, the question of whether any such collusion took place has been pretty much settled.

The CBC has said it is planning disciplinary action, so the story is credible.

Does that mean the Liberal Party is planning to backtrack on the public statement that the entire issue was a "fabrication"?  Or is the Liberal Party satisfied to let the CBC report to take the fall for this?

Forcing the reporter to bear all the consequences is a plan that could work, as long the CBC keeps the identity of the reporter a secret.  But whatever happens, hopefully the media in general will come to appreciate that getting too close to politicians is a dangerous thing.

The issue of collusion between the CBC and the Liberal Party in questioning Brian Mulroney continues to smolder.  A CBC spokesperson has said that action, if any, will be taken in private.

In a letter to the CBC ombudsman, the Conservative Party is challenging the CBC to come clean.

So how does the CBC report on ethical lapses?

Not surprisingly, it depends on who has allegedly suffer a lapse in judgment.

But then it seems like the media establishment as a whole in this country is guilty of pulling its punches on the CBC-Liberal collusion story.

The allegation is that Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez colluded with the CBC, asking questions of Brian Mulroney written by a CBC reporter.  If you read blogs, you know all about it.  If you get your news from TV, radio, and newspapers, you might not.  That's not a surprise because professional courtesy makes news organizations loathe to accuse each other of wrongdoing.

It took less than 24 hours for bloggers to discover that Dan Rather and CBS had serious problems with the Killian Memo report in 2004, but it took a week before other networks in the United States dared to suggest that CBS had used faked documents to smear George W Bush.

In the same way, there is little reporting of the allegation of collusion between CBC news and the Liberal Party to embarrass or trap Brian Mulroney.

The National Post has broken that silence with a gutsy column by L. Ian Macdonald.  He makes the case that when Pablo Rodriguez asked his questions of Brian Mulroney during the Commons ethics committee hearing, it should have been immediately obvious that something was amiss.

Pablo Rodriguez rarely mutters a word in English, and yet there he was, asking  meticulously worded questions en Anglais.

I say gutsy because the column touches on two tricky issues.

The first is whether Pablo Rodriguez is even capable of functioning in English at that level.

The second follows from the first.  If you have doubts as to whether he can string that many English words together with that sophistication, then you have to conclude that Pablo Rodriguez was merely a sock puppet for the CBC.

But there is a third element not covered in Macdonald's column, and that is the conclusion that Pablo Rodriguez was looking out for Pablo Rodriguez, and the Liberal Party is now paying the price.

Aaron Wudrick has received an email from a VP at the CBC in which it appears that a decision has been reached concerning allegations that a CBC reporter was acting in collusion with the Liberal Party to frame questions to ask of Brian Mulroney at the Commons ethics committee hearings into the Karlheinz Schreiber affair.

The Conservatives are not satisfied with what has been said to date on the allegations of collusion between the Liberal Party and the CBC.  It seems that the CBC fed questions to Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez to ask of Brian Mulroney who was appearing in front of the Commons ethics committee to answer questions raised by Karlheinz Schreiber.  The questions asked by Rodriguez did not seem to have anything to do with Schreiber.

It's bad enough that the Liberals sometimes seem to be fishing, but to be fishing on behalf of the CBC, and doing it on the sly?

The Canadian Press is reporting that the CBC plans to investigate allegations that a CBC reporter and a Liberal MP worked together to frame questions to ask Brian Mulroney during his appearance in front of the Commons ethics committee.

There is no startling revelation. But there might have been one. If Brian Mulroney had given a different answer to the question posed by Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez, but actually written by the CBC, did the CBC have a headline and a story ready to go? Was all that was needed a "break"?

If the break was not forthcoming, was the CBC prepared to manufacture one by having Pablo Rodriguez act as a proxy reporter? And were the Liberals only too happy to help out?

One of the strangest things to come out of the Karlheinz Schreiber hearings is the allegation that the CBC and the Liberals have cooperated on designing questions for Liberal MPs to pose during the hearings.

Is the CBC trying to manufacturer the news, and guide the direction of the events? There is a name for this sort of thing -- yellow journalism.

Stephane Dion must be very grateful for the Karlheinz Schreiber story.

Since the Schreiber thing exploded, the Tories continue to do well in the polls, while the Liberals have never polled so poorly.

So why would Stephane Dion be grateful? I have no doubt the polls would be telling us exactly the same thing had Karlheinz Schreiber never uttered a word and was quietly extradited to Germany. Schreiber has not hurt the Conservatives, nor is he helping the Liberals.

But it is keeping Liberal woes out of the limelight. The story has turned out to be a nice hole in which the Liberal Party can hide. Losing is still losing, but it's nice not to have to keep talking about it.

Karlheinz Schreiber has told the Commons ethics committee that there was nothing to his story. Brian Mulroney and Karlheinz Schreiber never discussed money while Mulroney was still in office. Mulroney certainly never took any money. And in any case, the money that later paid (after Mulroney returned to private life) had nothing to do with the Airbus Affair, which essentially means Brian Mulroney was correctly paid the $2.1 million in 1997 when he sued the Liberal government for libel.

Now thanks the inability of certain members of the Liberal Party to recognize when they were being played for fools, Karlheinz Schreiber might very well spend the rest of his life in Canada, and never face charges in Germany for fraud.

OK, I have to admit, I didn't see this one coming at all. I fully expected that Karlheinz Schreiber would not say a word to the parliamentary ethics committee, even after all the political fireworks expended in getting him to Ottawa from Toronto, where he was awaiting extradition to Germany on charges of fraud and tax evasion.

But to then turn around and harshly slap the committee? Karlheinz Schreiber gives out a little bit of pleasure, then a little bit of pain, and the opposition members of the committee don't see just how disgusting this is becoming.

Many observers predicted a circus when Karlheinz Schreiber appeared. I'm not sure a circus is the right metaphor. The metaphor I'm thinking of involved whips and straps and chains and latex body suits.

You know how they say no good deed goes unpunished? Justice Minister Rob Nicholson might turn out to be living proof of that. The opposition has succeeded at getting a Speaker's Warrant to compel Karlheinz Schreiber to testify in front of a parliamentary committee on ethics. But warrant or no warrant, Schreiber is already setting conditions and issuing demands, daring the the opposition to grow a backbone and send him back to Germany.

Rob Nicholson has a backbone, and made it clear he was not willing to lift a single finger to help Karlheinz Schreiber make a mockery of the government. Parliament, on the other hand, is being mocked at every turn as the committee shows its willingness to go to any length to have Schreiber appear. When the ethics committee asked Nicholson to use his powers to get Schreiber out of jail, he told them he couldn't. That might not have been technically correct, since experts seem to think he certainly could have. But he wouldn't do it.

I think he was trying do the committee a favour.

In return, the opposition members screamed contempt.

Karlheinz Schreiber is using the promise of revealing significant new information about his dealings with former prime minister Brian Mulroney and the Canadian government about the Airbus contract during the early 1990s as a way of avoiding extradition to Germany where he faces charges of tax evasion and fraud.

The problem for Schreiber is that if he is going to be questioned by two different judicial proceedings (a parliamentary committee this week and an inquiry in the future), he has to be careful that he tell the same credible story both times, or he could be hit with perjury charges, and end up in Germany anyway.

In what I see as a curious turn of events, Karlheinz Schreiber has issued a press release today. The contents are not remarkable -- the release concerns the question of his pending extradition to Germany -- but the name of the lawyer is.

Given that the release is about the extradition fight, you would expect to see the names of the lawyers fighting that case, Edward and Brian Greenspan, to be listed as the contacts for questions.

Instead, the lawyer is Alexander Sennecke, a partner in the firm handling an entirely different case, that being the lawsuit Schreiber filed against Brian Mulroney to recover the $300,000 payment Schreiber made to Mulroney in 1993 and 1994.

Of course, the two cases are linked politically. The government is under pressure to put off the extradition in order to allow Schreiber to testify in an inquiry into these payments. But legally, these two matters have always been treated as separate and unrelated, to the point of having two different legal teams.

But now this curious crossover.

Some people are seeing signs that not only is the Karlheinz Schreiber controversy not connecting with Canadians, who by and large aren't buying into the Liberal argument that this is a scandal that involves the current government, but they are also seeing signs that Stephane Dion's Liberals might find themselves embroiled in scandal instead.

I'm not sure that it can go that far, but I'm pretty sure that if there is any blowback at all, Stephane Dion is finished. The Liberal Party can put up with only so much incompetence.

Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion has outlined his opinion about what an investigation into Karlheinz Schreiber's dealing with Brian Mulroney ought to cover.

Karl Schreiber? Check.

Brian Mulroney? Check.

Stephen Harper and everything ever done anywhere by his government on any subject? Check.

I bet you noticed the same thing I did. Stephane Dion, while trying to apply some constraint to the powers of an inquiry, has potentially crippled it.

Brian Mulroney has refused to explain the details behind the $300,000 payment he received from Karlheinz Schreiber that is now the centre of a growing political firestorm in Ottawa.

Brian Mulroney is not being evasive for the sake of being evasive. Remember that this $300,000 payment is the subject of a lawsuit filed by Schreiber against Mulroney. Brian Mulroney can't really talk much about it right now.

It might be nice to remember that once in a while, instead of making it seem like a reason to be immediately suspicious of Brian Mulroney.

Karlheinz Schreiber does not take "No!" for an answer. And yet that is the only answer he seems to ever get from Canadian courts when it comes to considering his extradition to Germany.

A man of conviction? Or is he just obstinate? Perhaps Karlheinz Schreiber is as deaf as a post.

Interestingly, all the accepted reasons to deny a valid extradition request that Justice Minister Rob Nicholson can call upon to keep Karlheinz Schreiber in the country focus on what a wickedly unjust place Germany is, and how it is manifestly unjust in some way to send Schreiber there to face charges.

Of course, that is manifestly absurd.

Which means Canada doesn't have any good reason to insult German authorities by keeping Karlheinz Schreiber in Canada.

Maybe law is too subtle for this simple engineer, but in life, when someone has your fate in his hands, you ought to be nice to that person.

Or at least not insulting.

But for Karlheinz Schreiber's lawyers to call Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, a lawyer himself, untrustworthy, well, it is not the sort of thing that would make me want to cut Schreiber any slack, not if I was the justice minister.

Karlheinz Schreiber is facing extradition to Germany, but is trying to avoid that by leveling allegations of making shady business deals with former prime minister Brian Mulroney while Mulroney was in office. At least that's what it looks like to a lot of people.

Indeed, Schreiber seemed to confirm that when he declared that his testimony was contigent on not being sent to Germany. The truth be damned, he didn't want to face trial in Germany.

But the Liberals have also argued that it is important for Schreiber to stay in the country. Why? Not for Schreiber's benefit, of course, but so that justice can be served.

Now curiously, Schreiber's language has moderated. Now he seems to be interested in justice too.

What a coincidence.

Karlheinz Schreiber is the German businessman facing serious charges in Germany. He is in Canada fighting extradition. He is famous in Canada, of course, for his involvement with former prime minister Brian Mulroney. That relationship led to allegations of influence peddling that was investigated by the RCMP over 15 years ago. The investigation cleared Brian Mulroney. Mulroney then sued the government and was awarded $2 million. Fast forward to 2007, and Karl Schreiber is literally weeks away from a flight to Germany, and quite possibly prison. Suddenly Schreiber drops a bombshell -- an agreement to pay Mulroney $300,000 was made when Mulroney was still in office (during the last 48 hours, as it turns out).

I've made it clear that I think Karlheinz Schreiber is interested only in avoiding extradition. At 73, he only needs to delay extradition for a year or so, and he'll probably never return to German soil. By manipulating events to cause a public inquiry to be called, he has made that likely, especially since his patsies in the Liberal Party are obliging him by demanding that he not be extradited.

Robert Fife of CTV has made a similar observation.

And now Schreiber dispells any lingering doubt. He promises not to testify in any Canadian proceedings if he is sent to Germany.

The other shoe drops.

[Sorry about the title, but I couldn't resist working Das Boot into a Schreiber post.]

[Yes, I know "Das Boot" means "The Boat" and has nothing to do with footwear. It just sounds funny.]

Stephane Dion is suffering from an affliction known as Harper Derangement Syndrome. It is a sorry sight, and it is only through your generous support that can bring us closer to a cure.

CTV's Robert Fife is echoing my point that Karlheinz Schreiber is clearly using his allegations about money payments to Brian Mulroney as a way to evade deportation to Germany. But Schreiber can't do it alone. He needs allies.

Or puppets.

Liberal MP Robert Thibault admits that Karlheinz Schreiber is using the Liberals to avoid deportation to Germany. Stephane Dion is taking a big risk.

The more I look at the circumstances around Karlheinz Schreiber's allegations involving Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper, the more I wonder whether Karlheinz Schreiber is borrowing a page from John Mark Karr's playbook.

The Liberals are howling for a full judicial inquiry into Brian Mulroney's dealings with Karlheinz Schreiber. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a hypocrite, the Liberals charge, if he proceeds with his plan for a preliminary third-party invetigation.

Remember Gomery?! This issue deserves the same treatment!

Maybe it does -- but only in the fullness of time. But despite what the Liberals are saying, we don't really know enough to decide yet. Perhaps Stephen Harper can wait to proceed until he has enough information to make the right decision.

Paul Martin certainly waited at least that long.