Article content

MONTREAL — SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. is walking back a statement by its CEO, who said last week he never cited the protection of 9,000 Canadian jobs as a reason the construction giant should be granted a remediation agreement.

Neil Bruce told The Canadian Press last Wednesday that if SNC-Lavalin is convicted of criminal charges and barred from bidding on federal contracts its workers would end up working for the Montreal-based company’s foreign rivals.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or SNC-Lavalin clarifies CEO’s statement that risk of job losses was never used in push for remediation agreement Back to video

“We have never put forward anything that is purely an economic argument about jobs and why we think we qualify for a DPA (deferred prosecution agreement),” he said in an interview. “We put forward an argument in terms of the public interest.”

The charges stem from allegations the engineering firm paid millions of dollars in bribes to win government business in Libya between 2001 and 2011.

In a statement posted to its website Monday afternoon, SNC-Lavalin says it never threatened the federal government.