A former manager at the McGill University Health Centre has been sentenced to 39 months in prison for accepting a $10-million bribe from SNC-Lavalin.
Yanai Elbaz pleaded guilty in November to accepting the bribe to help SNC-Lavalin win the multi-billion-dollar contract to build and maintain the hospital at the Glen Site.
Elbaz, who was an aide to the late hospital CEO Arther Porter, also pleaded guilty to influence peddling, breach of trust, and money laundering.
Porter and Elbaz both created shell companies to launder the bribe money – a total of $22.5 million -- that they received to rig the bidding process to favour SNC-Lavalin.
Quebec authorities have described the case as the largest corruption fraud case in Canadian history.
Joint sentence recommendation
Crown prosecutor Claudia Lalonde-Tardiff said she was pleased Judge Claude Leblond agreed with the sentence recommended by both the Crown and Elbaz's lawyer.
"This will send a message to deter others, a significant one, and it should tell people that white-collar criminals will face a significant sentence," said Lalonde-Tardiff.
Elbaz has been detained since his guilty plea on Nov. 26, and so judge considered those days, knocking 32 days off his sentence.
MUHC seeks compensation
Leblond also ruled that Elbaz will not have to pay back the bribe, as the MUHC was demanding because any restitution is more appropriately dealt with in civil court.
The MUHC says that because of the bribery in which Elbaz was a participant it was swindled out of nearly $1 billion. It is seeking a return of $934 million from Elbaz, Porter's estate, and SNC-Lavalin, among others.
Alexander De Zordo, a lawyer for the hospital, had told the court the MUHC contract was inflated by up to 20 per cent, meaning it is owed that much.
While the contract to build the hospital complex was $1.3 billion, the total cost was close to $4.6 billion when the costs of managing the public-private partnership were factored in. Since seeking $934 million from Elbaz is unrealistic, De Zordo suggested the hospital should receive at least what is in the frozen bank account.
Investigators so far have only located $6 million of the amount given to Elbaz. It was in bank accounts in Switzerland, which are now frozen. Leblond ruled against the MUHC receiving that money.
He said he would leave it up to a Quebec Superior Court judge hearing the civil case to decide the fate of the $6 million -- an amount traced back to the $10-million payoff.
One more trial in February
Porter died in a jail cell in Panama in 2015 while fighting an extradition order to return to Canada and face justice.
The only outstanding case among those initially charged is former SNC-Lavalin chief executive Pierre Duhaime. His trial is set to begin in February.
- With a report by Sidhartha Banerjee of The Canadian Press
