M. Dion's preposterous priority

Here's the headline:

Schreiber's Cdn allegations trump German court case: Dion

In Canada all we have is a supposed political scandal of some sort. For all the efforts of the RCMP and others there are no, repeat no, criminal charges against anyone (and neither a public inquiry nor Commons committee hearings can lead to such charges). And if you believe there ever will be Canadian criminal charges arising out of Mr Schreiber's actions, find me a tooth fairy.

Yet for M. Dion, Canadian politics should supersede the trial in Germany of real criminal charges against Mr Schreiber. Here's a sample of what lies behind those charges--this was written in 2000, for pity's sake:

Just after lunch on Aug. 26, 1991, in the Swiss border town of St. Margrethen, three Germans converged in a shopping center parking lot. One of the men handed over an envelope containing $500,000 in cash. After a brief discussion, they went their separate ways.

Eight years later, the consequences of that meeting are rocking Germany's political Establishment to its core. The three who came together that day were Karlheinz Schreiber, a German-Canadian arms dealer; Walther Leisler Kiep, the longtime treasurer of Helmut Kohl's Christian Democratic Union; and Horst Weyrauch, Kohl's trusted party accountant. The $500,000 passed from Schreiber to Weyrauch--payment, investigators suspect, for the CDU's support of a sale of 36 tanks by industrial giant Thyssen to Saudi Arabia. But this is not an isolated case of bribery. Prosecutors have established that the money landed back in CDU accounts. And that has led them to investigate a much broader web of corruption involving CDU finances and secret bank accounts run by former Chancellor Kohl.

[...]

How did it come to this? The CDU's troubles started in 1995, when prosecutors in Augsburg began investigating the dealings of arms dealer Schreiber. Investigators stumbled onto the $500,000 payment as part of a probe into commissions Schreiber received for lobbying work he did for Airbus Industrie and Thyssen in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It took them four years to amass evidence, but finally they issued a warrant for Schreiber's arrest on tax-evasion charges. Canadian police arrested the 65-year-old Schreiber in a Toronto restaurant last September [1999, good grief!]. He is now fighting the prosecutors' efforts to extradite him to Germany. In press interviews, Schreiber has said the payment was meant as a contribution to the CDU. BUSINESS WEEK could not reach him in Toronto for comment...

Should any Canadians actually be interested in the facts about what happened with any Airbus bribe money and Air Canada, it's a hell of lot more likely to come out in a German court than in any proceeding here:

Les procureurs allemands savent à qui Schreiber a versé de l'argent

[German prosecutors know who Schreiber greased with the money]

The Germans clearly believe they have some concrete things related to criminality--called evidence--that we do not have. And are unlikely to turn up in any sensible time frame. But M. Dion maintains we should not let that simple reality stand in the way of a great, if fruitless in any practical judicial sense, circus here.

Our political class are frankly juvenile beyond all reason if they do not see we have kept the Germans waiting long enough to deal with serious criminal matters. How would Canadians feel if the shoe were on the other foot?

German political uproar stops Schreiber extradition

Canadian criminal charges eight years old

Extradite Mr Schreiber immediately when judicial appeals have run their course. The Minister of Justice should not intervene.

Mark C.

Posted by markc at November 25, 2007 12:29 PM