SNC-Lavalin executives tied to Gaddafi lose jobs

The private security contractor who bodyguarded Saadi Gaddafi during the 2011 Libyan revolution was to be deported to Australia on Thursday night after he was deemed complicit in crimes against humanity. Gary Peters was scheduled to be escorted onto the 8:20 p.m. Air Canada flight to Sydney, according to a letter he received this week. He was to be accompanied by several Canada Border Services Agency officers.

During Libya’s long dictatorship, the Gaddafi regime repeatedly turned to SNC-Lavalin for its construction needs. The Montreal-based company got a $500-million contract to build an airport in Benghazi and a $275-million deal to put up the Gharyan prison. But there was a cost to doing business with the Libyans: SNC-Lavalin, Canada’s largest engineering and construction company, allegedly funnelled $160-million in kickbacks to Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s son, some of which paid for luxury yachts.

The son of dictator Col. Muammar Gaddafi was paid $160-million in kickbacks for steering major contracts in Libya to SNC-Lavalin, Canada’s biggest engineering and construction company, police are alleging, adding some of it paid for luxury yachts. An RCMP search warrant document unsealed Friday said the bribes were paid to Saadi Gaddafi by Riadh Ben Aissa, who was then vice-president of Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin. Mr. Ben Aissa has since left the company and is now jailed in Switzerland.

A former senior SNC-Lavalin executive accused by the RCMP of paying $160-million in kickbacks to the son of Libyan dictator Col. Muammar Gaddafi was only following company orders, his brother claimed Saturday. Dr. Rafik Ben Aissa told the National Post his brother Riadh Ben Aissa was “an honorable brave man and a scapegoat” for the political change that has swept across North Africa since the Arab Spring of 2011.

MONTREAL – When SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. chief executive Jacques Lamarre met a hot-shot engineer named Sami Bebawi for dinner in mid-1998, he was looking for someone who could help turn around the company’s money-losing construction unit after years of losses. Mr. Lamarre, who now works for Montreal law firm Heenan Blaikie, thought he’d found his man. Mr. Bebawi was a smart and aggressive water specialist, and his small 25-employee firm was snatching up major Quebec contracts from its much larger rivals.

MEXICO — An RCMP affidavit unsealed on Friday has revealed new details about an alleged Canadian-led plot to smuggle Saadi Gaddafi to Mexico as his dictator father’s regime was falling to Libyan rebels in 2011. Since her arrest 14 months ago in Mexico City, where she has been charged with conspiring the fly Mr. Gaddafi and his family into the country on false documents, Canadian mediator Cynthia Vanier has denied the allegations.

MONTREAL — Allegations of impropriety swirling around SNC-Lavalin and Quebec’s construction industry has prompted the Shriners to take greater control of who builds its new Montreal hospital, the philanthropic group said Thursday. The Shriners selected SNC-Lavalin to manage construction of the $127-million hospital that will be built adjacent to a $2.35-billion super-hospital set to open in the summer of 2015.

MONTREAL — SNC-Lavalin says it was justified in firing a former executive last year because it claims he acted illegally to help smuggle the son of Libya dictator Moammar Gadhafi to Mexico. The engineering giant is defending itself against a nearly $1-million wrongful dismissal lawsuit filed by former controller Stephane Roy.