Political fallout overcasts Padma bridge fiasco

A thrashing political storm had subdued the profundity of a corruption scandal involving US$1.2 billion World Bank (WB) financing for the construction of Padma Bridge in Bangladesh. From Washington to Toronto, to Dhaka, the storm is leaving behind legacies of garish eye-washing, obfuscation, and miscarriage of investigation and justice in its devastating wakes.

The rejuvenation, valediction and the vindication being savoured by the incumbent AL regime in Bangladesh are also largely misplaced, according to the manner in which an Ontario court exonerated the three main accused of the Canadian SNC Lavalin Group from charges that the court said ‘couldn’t be proved.’

It was a civil litigation in which the threshold for proving the guilt or innocence of the accused needed no ‘overwhelming’ evidencing. A mere finding of ‘more likely than not’ was the yardstick to suffice for the judges to terminate further proceedings due to the prosecution, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), not producing any witness to testify in support of the allegations brought before the court.  That, however, doesn’t diminish the gravity of the allegations. Nor does it penetrate deeper into the world of grafting and corruptions where cash transactions and diverted payments are the norms.

Since the signing of a deal between the WB and the GOB in February 2011 to finance US$ 1.2 billion to the project, estimated to cost $ 2.9 billion, flurries of suspicious activities began to shape the destiny of this mega venture, according to the WB. In September 21, 2011, the WB informed formally the Bangladesh Finance Minister that “communications minister Syed Abul Hossain and high officials of SAHCO had pressed for the appointment of SAHCO as a “commission agent” in the selection of contractors’ pre-qualification for the main bridge’s construction.”

The WB then moved to offer specific information to the RCMP to initiate investigation on bribing foreign officials by the Canadian conglomerate SNC Lavalin group; suspended the financing deal with Bangladesh; and requested Bangladesh government to terminate from authority those involved in the alleged scam. The concerned minister’s own business interest being at the centre of the allegation, the conflict of interest was too conspicuous to brush aside. The minister resigned and, a top bureaucrat disciplined.

In Canada, the allegations claimed of financial misconducts and bribery having occurred in granting a $50-million construction supervision contract (“CSC”)/consultancy to the SNC Lavalin Group, which was one of the five companies short-listed for the CSC component. The WB’s suspicion deepened further due to the SNC Lavalin Group being ranked second in the bidding process, triggering an investigator with the Bank’s integrity unit, which approached the RCMP “concerning allegations that had come to (their) attention regarding possible corruption involving SNC-Lavalin and the Padma Bridge project.”

Upon being charged, Kevin Wallace, former vice-president of energy and infrastructure at the SNC Lavalin Group, his subordinate Ramesh Shah, ex-VP of the international division, and Zulfiquar Ali Bhuiyan, a dual Bangladeshi-Canadian citizen, all pleaded not guilty to bribing foreign officials in order to secure a construction contract in Bangladesh. Ever since, a flurry of political pressure making followed beneath the surface, through diplomatic and other means, according to a reliable source at the WB who insisted on anonymity.

Evidence is in Bangladesh where the alleged acts of corruption occurred. As the government moved hurriedly to show a cleaner face, on February 2, 2012, the ACC hurriedly sent an investigation report to the WB saying that the ‘allegation was not proved by documentary evidence and other proof.’ The political lobbying and global parleying that followed had also led to the RCMP not pursuing the case aggressively. This was somewhat un-Canadian as Canada hardly caves into political deal-making.

Look how the RCMP pursued the case. Foremost, the Mounties, as they’re locally known, never bothered to talk to the all four “tipsters” who were the sources of the allegation. As if to perfunctorily stay active with the case’s progression, only one of the tipster’s testimony was recorded, that to over phone. The judge observed in the decision that, “the RCMP officer who swore what is known as an Information to obtain (ITO) in 2011 to secure a wiretap of the accused men’s private communications had failed to provide verifiable information.”

The court further observed, “As is apparent from a review of the ITO filed in support of the first authorization (for a wiretap), most, if not all, of the information provided by the three tipsters had, in turn, been received by the tipsters from other sources.”

Moreover, in July 2015, the WB challenged an Ontario Superior Court decision that ordered it to produce documents related to its investigation of the bribery allegations in the Padma Bridge project, resulting in the Supreme Court of Canada announcing on May 02, 2016 that, “The individual respondents (the “accused”) are jointly charged with one count of bribing foreign public officials under the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act, S.C. 1998, c. 34, in relation to SNC-Lavalin’s bid for a construction supervision contract for the Padma Bridge in Bangladesh.

In the course of their criminal proceeding, the accused brought an application for an order requiring the appellant third party to produce certain documents. The appellant had received information from tipsters about possible corruption involving SNC-Lavalin, and had approached the RCMP, providing it with information concerning the allegations. Two of the appellant’s employees subpoenaed by the defense did not appear before the court and the appellant took the position that it was not required to attend given its immunity from court process as an international organization.

The defense’s application for an order requiring the production of documents by the appellant was granted in part by the Superior Court of Justice on the basis that the appellant had waived its immunity. The appellant was ordered to produce certain records for court review in accordance with R. v. O’Connor, [1995] 4 S.C.R” (Supreme Court of Canada: 36315: World Bank Group v. Kevin Wallace, et al.), which the appellant never did.

The WB did a bad job in how it rolled out and pursued this case, as did the RCMP. “The RCMP did not contact any of the sources of the hearsay information relayed by the tipsters, even though some of those sources were identified by the tipsters,” according to case records.

Case’s records also reveal that the case was virtually abandoned by the prosecutions, which is anything but non-political. In 2016, after lawyers of the accused demanded that the WB hand over all of its files related to the case, including those the RCMP relied upon to secure its wiretaps, the Bank refused to participate in the court hearing, insisting that ‘its status as an international organization grants it immunity and that it could not be compelled to turn over any documents.’

The court felt furious. In a decision issued in December 2016, Ontario Superior Court Justice Ian Nordheimer sided with the accused, ruling that the ‘World Bank had waived the immunity it would have been afforded under Canadian law by actively participating in the RCMP’s criminal investigation.’

Alan Lenczner, a lawyer acting for the World Bank in its Supreme Court challenge, said: ‘The Bank is concerned about preserving the anonymity of informants in anti-corruption probes, particularly in countries where whistle-blowers are more likely to face reprisals.” Justice Nordheimer addressed this issue in his December ruling, saying that Canadian law already protects sensitive police sources. He also noted that two of the WB’s four tipsters had already been treated as confidential informants by the court.

The WB staying away from making depositions to the court and not providing evidence on ground of ‘immunity as an international organization,’ and the RCMP giving up any genuine effort to prove the case had resulted in the outcome of the court not finding enough probative evidence to convict the accused.

Meanwhile, the quest to find a conspiratorial nexus between the WB and the Nobel laureate Dr. Mohammed Yunus, the virtual combative postures of the incumbent AL regime to reap political harvest out of this Ontario Court decision, and the politicking that are poisoning the air do imply and point toward the consummation of a planned effort that’d deterred the WB and the RCMP not to move aggressively to prove the allegations in the first place.

It’s a disgrace destined to go down in the annals of history as something reprehensive, non-restitutive and inexcusable. It’s also another major instance of power of real politic and unseen sleight of hand circumventing rule of law.

Source: Weekly Holiday