OTTAWA

Warnings that Rahim Jaffer was abusing a special passport issued to Canadians travelling on government business fuelled Stephen Harper’s doubts about the former Conservative caucus chair and his wife, Helena Guergis. The warnings, coupled with misuse of Guergis’s cabinet office for backdoor lobbying, convinced the Prime Minister that Jaffer was falsely presenting himself as an insider.

Sources close to the controversy say Harper was told Jaffer used the passport on a trip to Cuba promoting green technology to the Castro regime. That raised immediate fears that Cuban officials could have been misled that Jaffer carried Canada’s seal of approval.

According to one source, that was seen as part of the pattern of deceit and cronyism that badly embarrassed Conservatives and sparked a Commons firestorm.

Diplomats and others representing Canada abroad are prohibited from using special passports for personal travel. As a minister’s spouse, Jaffer was entitled to carry the distinctive red passport when accompanying Guergis on official trips.

Details are sketchy but it’s believed Jaffer went to Cuba independently and met high-ranking members of the administration. Those discussions apparently focused on how the company Jaffer co-founded, Ottawa-based Green Power Generation, could help Cuba reduce its dependence on imported oil.

Both the company and Jaffer’s travels are at the centre of the continuing scandal over the defeated Edmonton MP’s activities and particularly his dealings with shady Toronto financier Nazim Gillani. It was those dealings that finally convinced the Prime Minister to sack the underperforming Guergis and drive her out of the Conservative caucus.

Last year Jaffer and partner Patrick Glemaud quietly promoted three environmental projects to the federal government worth some $850,000. While those attempts to secure public funding were unsuccessful, a Toronto Star investigation ultimately exposed that Jaffer was using his Conservative connections to navigate Ottawa’s back channels without registering as a lobbyist.

That investigation also drew attention to Jaffer’s 2008 trip with Guergis, then a junior minister, to Belize and Guatemala. The Star reported that private detective Derrick Snowdy tipped the Prime Minister’s office that Gillani claimed, among many other things, to be reserving three offshore companies to hold cash for the now disgraced Conservative power couple.

Jaffer and Guergis have denied the allegations and Gillani, who faces fraud charges in another matter, is notoriously loose with facts. Still, Snowdy’s reports about offshore companies, influence peddling and cocaine parties with hookers were serious enough for Harper to call in the RCMP.

It’s not clear when the Prime Minister first learned about the passport issue or if it is part of unspecified information still being withheld about the case. More certain is that Harper was justifiably riled by the combination of the visit to a country loaded with Canada-U.S. diplomatic sensitivities, as well as the abuse of privilege.

Even so, both the warnings and the Prime Minister’s reaction are being kept under unusually tight wraps. That suggests there’s more to an incident that on the surface seems little more serious than a breach of protocol.

If there is more to the story, no one here is saying much. Officials at the Cuban embassy are scrambling to find any record of a Jaffer visit, while their Canadian counterparts at Foreign Affairs also seem genuinely in the dark.

In a prepared statement, Guergis said she and Jaffer were briefed on the rules for travelling on a diplomatic passports and that she behaved accordingly. Jaffer did not respond to questions about the use of the document or the trip.

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