Crawl Across the Ocean

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

I'm Sure it was All Perfectly Above Board

The whole Airbus-Mulroney-Schreiber scandal is one I know little about (although Andrew Coyne links to his previous columns on the matter here) but this latest bit sure doesn't sound too good,

"Former prime minister Brian Mulroney received $300,000 from a secret Swiss bank account after he left office because he was strapped for cash, German businessman Karlheinz Schreiber has told The Fifth Estate."


Keep in mind that Schreiber himself is wanted facing fraud charges and is deeply involved in the whole thing, but still.

Also, can anyone explain why Mulroney would have been strapped for cash?

posted by Declan at Wednesday, February 08, 2006

1 Comments:

  • I wouldn't presume to know the slightest about the Mulroney household finances, but that question, why would he need money, got me thinking about something I read ten years ago in Stevie Cameron's On The Take:

    "...[L]eaving Ottawa has clearly been a happy move for the Mulroneys. Financially they have also fared well. By July 1994, they had refinanced their house [a Westmount mansion purchased and renovated just before they left 24 Sussex] with a new CIBC morgage for $1 million at 7.25 percent calculated every six months; the payments were set at $7159.19, about $10,000 a year less than originally budgeted. (That slim financial advantage was offset by the increased value of the renovated house; now that it is assessed at over $2.2 million, instead of the $1.4 million of the previous year, the Mulroneys' property taxes have risen to nearly $25,000 a year from about $16,000.) Since leaving office, Mulroney has made enough money to pay over $1 million in renovations and furnishing costs for the house and to pay off another $300,000 or so on the original mortgage debt. Given his tax bracket, one former banker estimates his income must have exceeded $3 million in 1993-94..."

    Cameron poked away at conjecture about where Mulroney got all his money after leaving politics, suggesting nothing untoward, yet she suggested even his probably very generous Ogilvie Renault salary and corporate directorships, and smallish parliamentary pension, would have been very hard pressed to cover the jet-set lisfetyle and the kids' Ivy league educations, let alone buying and renovating the house.

    By Blogger Etymologica, at 11:36 AM  

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