Ex-Liberal To Be Charged In Sponsorship Scandal

Ex-Liberal to be charged in sponsorship scandal

Updated Fri. Apr. 18 2008 10:27 AM ET

Brian Daly, montreal.ctv.ca

MONTREAL -- For the first time, the RCMP is set to charge a former federal Liberal official in the sponsorship scandal that helped to bring down Paul Martin's Liberal government.

The Mounties have scheduled a news conference for 11 a.m. to announce charges against Benoit Corbeil, who ran the Liberal party's Quebec wing from 1999 to 2001.

Corbeil is one of a handful of top Quebec Liberals who ad executive Jean Brault says browbeat him for cash that was then funnelled to the party in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

It's not clear at this time what charges Corbeil will face.

Several ad executives, as well as the top bureaucrat who ran the sponsorship program, have pleaded guilty in recent years to fraud charges in connection with the program.

Corbeil gave some of the most devastating testimony at the Gomery inquiry into the sponsorship program.

At a public inquiry in 2005, Corbeil named named nine Liberal party workers as having been paid from a $50,000 cash donation by Brault.

Corbeil always denied that he pressured Brault to kick cash back to the party, and he also dismissed suggestions that he pocketed cash slated for party workers.

But he is one of several witnesses who backed Brault's account of how sponsorship money was secretly funnelled to the Liberal party in exchange for sponsorship contracts.

The sponsorship program was created under the former Liberal administration of longtime prime minister Jean Chretien, ostensibly to increase Ottawa's profile in Quebec following the No side's narrow victory in the 1995 referendum.

But the program was wrought with corruption, as Liberal-friendly ad firms pocketed massive amounts of taxpayer money while performing little or no work.

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