Four years ago, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officially leveled corruption and fraud charges against Montreal engineering firm SNC-Lavalin, over alleged criminal acts that occurred while that firm was doing business in Libya. The Globe and Mail broke the biggest scandal since Canada’s Adscam scandal, which cost the Liberals dearly in election year 2006. This latest scandal, also breaking in an election year, has to do with the involvement of Justin Trudeau and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) in the SNC-Lavalin case.

SNC-Lavalin operates in a variety of sectors globally, including mining and metallurgy, oil and gas, and the fraud and corruption charges against it include nearly $48 million in payments made to Libyan government officials between 2001 and 2011.

The case centers around Liberal MP Jody Wilson-Raybould (JWR), who served as Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada from 2015 until January 2019. She was then demoted in a cabinet shuffle to the position of Minister of Veterans Affairs, and suddenly resigned several days ago (February 12) following the Globe and Mail report, which alleged that the PMO “attempted to press” her to intervene in the corruption and fraud prosecution of SNC-Lavalin in her role as Attorney General, in order to spare the engineering giant — deemed to be a crown jewel in Quebec — from criminal prosecution. The story also indicated that she “came under heavy pressure.”

Now the Commons Justice Committee will look into whether JWR was subjected to any kind of pressure from Trudeau and/or the PMO. Meanwhile, Trudeau’s principal secretary, Gerald Butts, has suddenly quit. Butts is Trudeau’s longtime friend, confidante and confidence booster, and some even say that Butts is his brains. Trudeau calls Butts “the core of his inner circle.” The resignation was over the SNC affair. Criminal charges could also be laid against members of the PMO for obstruction of justice, if its interference is established.

Doing Business with a Jihadist Government

There is another twist in the criminal case involving SNC Lavalin, and the alleged involvement by Justin Trudeau and the PMO: Libya.

Between 2001 and 2011, a senior executive of SNC-Lavalin established “close ties” with Saadi Gaddafi, the son of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. The RCMP alleged that as the president’s son, Saadi Gaddafi “was in a position of power and able to give a business advantage to SNC-Lavalin in Libya,” and that he was “a major recipient of SNC’s largesse.” Court documents allege that the company offered “bribes worth $47.7 million to one or several public officials of the ‘Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.’”

Meanwhile, SNC-Lavalin was allegedly busy defrauding Libyan public agencies of “approximately 129.8 million.” Charges were laid by the RCMP against SNC executive Sami Bebawi and a former SNC executive vice president, Riadh Ben Aissa, who pleaded guilty to charges of corruption and money laundering relating to SNC-Lavalin’s Libyan operation. Aissa has since been extradited to Canada.

It has also been claimed that SNC “paid for lavish trips and more for relatives of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and even had some on payroll to ensure they got lucrative contracts.”

Saadi Gaddafi also has other unsavory personal baggage. He was acquitted last year of murdering Bashir al-Rayani, former footballer and coach of Tripoli’s Al-Ittihad football club. But now Bashir’s family intends to appeal Gaddafi’s acquittal, because they say “we could not get justice under his father’s regime, we will get it now, I’m confident!”

Some more background about the Libyan regime that SNC was allegedly wheeling and dealing with: Muammar Gaddafi seized power in Libya in a military coup d’etat in 1969. He was known for “horrific human rights abuses,” a supporter of jihad terror, “fervently Islamic and pro‐Palestine,” and once stated: “Christianity is not a faith for people in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Other people who are not sons of Israel have nothing to do with that religion….all those believers who do not follow Islam are losers…..We are here to correct the mistakes in the light of the teachings of the Koran.” Gaddafi also declared that “Iranians are our brothers” and fed into the victimology narrative that America was the great oppressor.

So here is the Canadian government involved not only in possible obstruction of justice, but also in trying to cover up the links of SNC-Lavalin with the Gaddafi regime.

As Trudeau scrambles to do damage control, it should be remembered that he has embraced Islamic supremacists, as well as policies of open-door immigration, heedless of the costs of all this to taxpayers. Meanwhile, he perpetually downplays the dangers of jihad, to the peril of Canadian citizens.

Even the Liberal-leaning CBC noted that “in the week since the SNC-Lavalin story broke, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has changed his talking points several times,” and now risks “brand damage.” Between the Globe and Mail and the CBC, it doesn’t look as if the $600,000,000 bailout package that Trudeau pledged to media, widely considered to be a bribe in an election year, is working in his favor.