OTTAWA - A longtime confidant of Brian Mulroney says he was only trying to be helpful when he drafted a memo on the former prime minister's lobbying deal with businessman Karlheinz Schreiber -- seven years after it happened.
Fred Doucet, testifying Tuesday at a public inquiry, said his aim in drawing up the February 2000 memo was to eliminate any "ambiguity" that had clouded the dealings between the two men.
"Mr. Schreiber had been a valued client, Mr. Mulroney was a lifelong friend," he told the inquiry headed by Justice Jeffrey Oliphant.
"I feared that trouble was brewing and they should have some kind of a document to memorialize what their work relationship had been."
Doucet maintained the idea was his own, but acknowledged under questioning that he had discussed it with Mulroney before approaching Schreiber in an effort to win his approval.
Documents tabled at the inquiry suggest that, at the time, there was a chance that both Doucet and Mulroney might be called to testify in court proceedings involving Schreiber.
Mulroney was also in the process of making a belated declaration to Revenue Canada on the lobbying payments he had received in 1993-94 -- a fact Doucet says he was unaware of at the time.
Schreiber has testified that he took a copy of the Doucet memo to show to his lawyer but refused to sign anything. He has also challenged the accuracy of the version of events related by Doucet and Mulroney.
The sketchy, two-paragraph memo drafted by Doucet makes no mention of Thyssen AG, a German firm that had proposed to set up a plant in Canada to build and export armoured vehicles. Schreiber was chairman of Thyssen's Canadian subsidiary Bear Head Industries.
Schreiber has said he paid Mulroney $300,000 to lobby for the project. He says the deal was reached just before Mulroney stepped down as prime minister in 1993 although the money didn't change hands until later.
Mulroney has acknowledged taking money from Schreiber but puts the total at $225,000. He says he lobbied foreign political leaders but not Canadian officials -- something that could have put him in breach of federal ethics rules.
