Jeff Sallot, Globe and Mail
OTTAWA — Members of the Commons public accounts committee say they fear senior Mounties covered up a nepotism scandal and the misappropriation of $3.1-million from the RCMP pension fund.
The evidence “looks bad” and the MPs are now wondering “was there a cover-up?” New Democrat David Christopherson said yesterday.
“You all walked away,” Conservative MP John Williams angrily told the senior Mounties sitting glumly at the witness table. “Everybody walks away. That’s not right.”
“Are we to forget everything that happened with this case? Is it really too late to do something?” asked an astonished Bloc Québécois MP, Paule Brunelle, after hearing that two senior Mounties were allowed to resign with full pension instead of facing criminal charges or even internal disciplinary action.
The committee is examining an Auditor-General’s report released last November that said the administration of the RCMP pension fund was rife with nepotism in the early 2000s and that $3.1-million was diverted from the fund to other Mountie accounts.
There is no evidence anyone pocketed the money, the Auditor-General’s Office said.
Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj said he is troubled that he could not get a straight answer from the RCMP about why a staff sergeant who was working on the internal investigation of the pension fund was forcibly removed from his office by senior officers and reassigned.
Mr. Wrzesnewskyj also said he has found documents showing that $900 in golfing fees for Mounties were billed as hotel expenses for a pension-fund committee meeting in St. Andrews, N.B., in 2001.
MPs from all parties said they are dissatisfied with the incomplete answers they got yesterday from RCMP witnesses about why it took so long to investigate the irregularities with management of the $12-billion pension fund.
The committee decided to hold further hearings to find out why former RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli cut short a criminal investigation into pension-fund management.
“If not malfeasance it was misfeasance,” the acting commissioner, Beverley Busson, said of the scandal she inherited when Mr. Zaccardelli resigned earlier in the year. (He quit after giving conflicting accounts to another parliamentary committee about when he learned of RCMP involvement in the case of Maher Arar, who was tortured in Syria.)
“We will work to make sure this never happens again,” Ms. Busson said.
She said she was unable to answer many questions about the scandal from personal knowledge because she was not in the chain of command at Ottawa headquarters at the time. She headed the RCMP’s field operations in British Columbia.
“There was serious misconduct. People were playing fast and loose with the rules,” Ottawa Police Chief Vince Bevan said, describing the irregularities with the pension fund.
Ottawa City Police were called to conduct a belated criminal investigation.
City police and the local Crown prosecutor’s office decided not to lay charges because the chance of getting convictions was low, Chief Bevan said.
Assistant auditor-general Hugh McRoberts told the committee that the first whiff of trouble was apparent to an RCMP staffing officer in May of 2002.
This officer complained about nepotism in the hiring of casual employees for work in the pension office. Forty-nine of the 65 casuals were friends or relatives of Mounties, and they were paid twice the specified government rate for their type of office work.
Despite the staffing officer’s expressed concerns, it was another 13 months before the RCMP opened a criminal investigation of its own members. Mr. Zaccardelli cancelled the criminal investigation two days later and instead asked for an internal audit, the Auditor-General’s Office said.
The internal audit was completed in October of 2003. But it was still another five months before the criminal investigation was resumed.
The Ottawa police were asked to run this investigation, Chief Bevan said. He assigned two senior detectives. But the far greater number of investigators came from the Mounties.
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