Moores's role in Mulroney-Schreiber case murky

Frank Moores, the lateNewfoundland premier,played a role in the money trail in the Mulroney-Schreiber affair, but Justice Jeffrey Oliphant could not determine how much.

In a lengthy report released Monday, Oliphant determined that former prime minister Brian Mulroney acted inappropriately by accepting $225,000 in cash from German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber.

Moores's name was heard often during testimony at the Oliphant inquiry, particularly involving his personal relationship with Mulroney during his stints as a former premier and then as a lobbyistthrough Ottawa-based Government Consultants International.

One of the terms of reference for Oliphant was to track the money trail, or more precisely how cash payments came into Mulroney's possession.

Oliphant was told that Moores made a $500,000 deposit to a Swiss bank account that had the code name "Frankfurt." As well, Schreibertold Oliphant that Moores owned that account, which shared a link to another account code-named "Britan," which Schreiber controlled.

"I find that the funds paid to Mr. Mulroney by Mr. Schreiber came from the Britan account; that the funds in the Britan account came from the Frankfurt account; and that the source of the funds in the Frankfurt account consisted of a portion of the commissions paid to Mr. Schreiber by Airbus Industrie," Oliphant wrote in his final report.

"For the reasons articulated in [the report's] Chapter 7, I find that the source of the funds paid by Mr. Schreiber to Mr. Mulroney was Airbus Industrie," he wrote.

Air Canada probe banned

However, Oliphant said there was nothing to prove that Mulroney knew where Schreiber's money came from.

"Based on the evidence adduced before me, it is impossible to conclude otherwise."

Theinquiry's terms barred it from looking into allegations that Mulroney and Schreiber were involved in a kickback scheme over the 1988 purchase of Airbus aircraft by Air Canada.

Oliphant noted that the factMoores is dead made it difficult to determine the full natureof his role.

"He died in 2005, so it is impossible to verify Mr. Schreiber's evidence about the Frankfurt account with the only other person who is alleged to have been involved," Oliphant wrote.

Oliphant, Manitoba's associate chief justice,was appointed by the federal Conservative government in 2008 to examine widely reported revelations that Mulroneyaccepted cash-stuffed envelopes from Schreiber in the early 1990s.

Investigative journalists have long linked Moores to the Mulroney-Schreiber affair, although Moores vigorously denied that he had done anything wrong in the years before his cancer-related death in 2005.

Moores was named in a controversial 1995 letter that theRCMP had sent to Swiss authorities, asking for information about Mulroney. Although the letter was supposed to have been kept confidential, it was leaked to the media, sparking an explosive political firestorm.

Oliphant, who noted that no fraud chargeswere ever brought against Schreiber, Mulroney or Moores, also saidMoores was not able to respond to allegations that Schreiber made about him.