Brian Mulroney did his best to act perplexed that Karlheinz Schreiber gave him envelopes stuffed with cash. Cash of all things! Thousand dollar bills no less. Mulroney seemed downright vexed at having to deal in grimy paper currency although he did point out it was valid, legal tender - perhaps simply wanting to use the word 'legal' in conjunction with his loot.
Mulroney gave the impressing he really didn't know what to do with cash so he just stuffed it in his safe at home or in a safety deposit box.
And yet, by some accounts, cash was the Mulroneys very favourite variety of capital. Norman Spector wrote of making a bank run once a month to fetch a supply of cash for Mila.
"Mulroney was not a rich man. Party funds were being drawn, and one of our staff was assigned to pore through personal expenses to determine if some might be reimbursed. Every month I cashed a cheque at a local bank and remitted the funds to Mila," Spector wrote.
Then there was the former prime minister's chef who once claimed he ran a regular shuttle picking up envelopes stuffed with cash from Fred Doucet and delivering them to Mrs. Mulroney - although he later denied every saying such a thing.
Schreiber picked up the 'not a rich man' theme in his evidence when he claimed he was approached by Doucet to give money to the boss because he was hard up.
And then there's the return to Montreal. The oh so not rich Mulroney began his return to private life by purchasing a posh home for $1.7-million. You don't find a lot of poor people who can manage that little trick. Better yet, before they moved into their 'fixer upper' they put around a million dollars into renovations. That's a lot of new toilets and counter tops.
The kicker though, according to Stevie Cameron, is that most of the cost of the renos was - paid in cash.
It strikes me that if this last point can be proven, somebody's got some 'splainin to do, somebody who was oh so not rich. Then again, Cameron seems to have gotten a couple of things wrong before.
3 comments:
I'm actually just in the middle of reading the man's memoirs (know your enemy!).
He writes a lot about how "vindictive and vengeful" the Liberal party of Canada is. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that this inquiry is happening under a Conservative government, though he will probably blame the opposition for pressuring the government into calling it (even though Mulroney himself demanded an inquiry to "clear his name")
It is all Karlheinz Schreiber's fault. These Germans! Corrupting our politicians ;)
That poor Mulroney family. Brian and Mila and their kids probably had to suffice on baloney sandwiches.
Did they have any nannies?
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