Stunning revelations mounted against the Liberal Party of Quebec as the Charbonneau Commission wrapped for the summer Wednesday.

Top Liberal party finance official Violette Trepanier testified Wednesday that some of the most controversial characters named during the commission also served as official fundraisers for the party. 

Trepanier said the party kept a registry of those who wanted to raise funds on its behalf.

That list of party fundraisers who were considered acceptable includes a lengthy list of people who are now facing criminal charges or have been questioned by the Charbonneau Commission, including Paolo Catania, Giuseppe Borsellino, Roche engineer France Michaud and Marc Yvan Cote, Jean-Pierre Sauriol, Riadh Ben Aissa of SNC-Lavalin who's currently awaiting extradition to Canada from a Swiss jail, and Lino Zambito.

Trepanier said that if the Liberal party's fundraising practices which listed donors by company had to change, she wasn't sure if they could.

"Unfortunately if we had to do this again, we'd do it differently. Well, we'd do the same but call it something else. We would have spoken of people," said Trepanier.

The list is so comprehensive, that the prosecutor took Trepanier to task for not seeing the obvious red flag, asking if she found it troubling.

“I admit it's troubling,” Trepanier said, “And I'm very disappointed.” 

The Liberals were so confident in their practice of raising money from corporate donors through employees, however, their own paperwork no longer listed individuals but strictly the companies for whom they worked, she testified.

“We'd do things differently now,” admitted Trepanier. “We'd at least use the names of the individuals.”

Trepanier also admitted she broke the rules when it came to accepting donations that were more than were legally allowed.

She told the Charbonneau Commission that on multiple occasions when receiving cheques that went over the legal $3,000 limit, she would take the balance and record it as having come from someone else.

In one case she accepted a donation and wrote down that it came from the donor, and the donor's daughter.

In many instances, however, Trepanier demonstrated a distinct unwillingness or inability to explain her own filing system, even when confronted from documents from her computer showing what appeared to be a list of donations for tens of thousands of dollars.

Poor fundraisers were replaced

Trepanier said ministers in certain fields had to raise more money than their counterparts, and implied that those who could not raise funds would be transferred to other areas.

She said while Nathalie Normandeau has come under the spotlight for her fundraising activity, other former ministers such as Philippe Couillard, Raymond Bachand and Monique Jerome-Forget were also successful fundraisers.

Trepanier said the ministers of Transportation and Municipal Affairs were expected to raise the most, and that Yvon Marcoux was not very good at raising money during his stint leading the Ministry of Transportation.

"Maybe he was more ethical?" asked Justice France Charbonneau, the head of the corruption inquiry.

Trepanier didn't answer that question directly, but repeated that Liberal party had its fundraising targets of $50,000 for MNAs and $100,000 for ministers.

Tricky ethics

Trepanier admitted that raising those funds was often a tricky ethical affair, and she explained how the MNA for Chomedey, Guy Ouellette, had problems with fundraiser Paul Vaillancourt.

According to Trepanier, Ouellette wanted another MNA, Julie Boulet, to attend an event in order to help him raise funds.

Trepanier told Ouellette at the time that was not appropriate, and Ouellette ended up replacing Vaillancourt.

Back before Labour Day

The Charbonneau Commission announced late Wednesday it would call more witnesses when it resumes at the end of the summer.

“We'll keep working this summer,” said Justice France Charbonneau. “We plan to resume the hearings by Labour Day at the latest.”