OTTAWA - It began with suspicions about mismanagement of funds, nepotism in hiring, questionable expense account entries, and contracts handed to consultants who did little work to earn their money.
But the RCMP pension scandal now centres on even bigger questions -- whether senior officers turned a blind eye to wrongdoing, thwarted efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice and retaliated against lower-ranking whistleblowers.
The latest chapter of the affair Monday, before the Commons public accounts committee, did nothing to answer those questions.
It did give former commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli an opportunity to defend his six-year term as the country's top cop. But it also gave his main accusers -- Chief Supt. Fraser Macaulay and retired Sgt. Ron Lewis -- a chance to flatly contradict his sworn testimony.
The controversy, which goes back to 2003, has already been the subject of two criminal investigations, an internal audit by the force and another review by Auditor General Sheila Fraser.
The starting point was the work of Denise Revine, a civilian employee in the RCMP human resources branch, who was assigned four years ago to carry out what she thought would be a routine review of the Mounties' $12-billion pension fund.
She reported to her superiors that the fund was being used as a "cash cow'' by high-level officials to cover expenses that should have come out of the force's operating budget.
"When I came across it, it was absolutely shocking,'' Revine told reporters last month after testifying at the same committee.
She took her concerns to he boss, Chief Supt. Macaulay, who in turn took them to Deputy Commissioner Barbara George and then to Zaccardelli. He was following in the footsteps of Sgt. Lewis, who had already beaten a path to the commissioner's door as the staff representative for rank-and-file Mounties on pension matters.
From there on, absolutely nothing is clear.
Zaccardelli says he immediately ordered an internal audit. Lewis says the commissioner did so only after he took the trouble to shot-circuit efforts by other officers to launch a criminal investigation.
"This is the problem I've had for six years with this man,'' declared Lewis."I keep telling him things, he keeps twitting and he keeps telling lies.''
The audit findings, finally delivered in 2004, were followed by the resignations of two senior civilian officials, Jim Ewanovich, and Dominic Crupi, who had been the key men in charge of the pension plan.
Zaccardelli took credit Monday for their departure, saying he moved decisively to get rid of them. "I was the captain of the ship . . . When information came to me I acted upon it immediately.''
The two former bureaucrats saw it differently.
Ewanovich insisted Monday he did nothing wrong but resigned because the scandal "happened on my watch and I was accountable.'' Crupi maintained he also quit on his own, without anyone telling him to do so.
Once the audit was out of the way, Zaccardelli ordered a renewed criminal investigation, this time calling on the Ottawa municipal police to handle the probe in an ostensible effort to ensure fairness and objectivity.
It turned out, however, that most of the investigators assigned to the case were from the RCMP, and even the Ottawa officers who were supposedly in charge reported through the RCMP chain of command rather than through their own force.
After 15 months of digging, Crown attorneys concluded in 2005 that there wasn't enough evidence to lay criminal charges. Instead four RCMP members were targeted for internal discipline -- but no action was taken because the one-year time limit for instituting such proceedings had already run out.
Auditor General Fraser, in her report in November 2006, concluded that $3.4 million in operating expenses had been improperly charge to the pension plan. She also noted the force had since paid the money back to the plan.
She further found that $1.3 million had been spent on consulting contracts that provided "little or no benefit'' and discovered that the Mounties had reimbursed the pension plan for just $270,000 of that total.
Fraser raised questions as well about the Ottawa police investigation, suggesting it wasn't carried out at sufficient arm's length from the RCMP to guarantee a public perception of independence.
Others have been more scathing in their assessment.
Chief Supt. Macaulay told MPs last month that the criminal probe was "prematurely shut down'' before it could follow all the leads necessary to ensure a successful prosecution.
Macaulay also testified that Deputy Commissioner George, who by then was in charge of human resources, warned him that he was "on an island'' by himself and that "nobody (else) was going to tell the truth'' about their roles in the affair.
Macaulay reiterated Monday that the warning from George came as she informed him that he was being seconded to a new job at the Defence Department -- a move he interpreted as punishment for having blown the whistle on the pension affair.
"I was removed because I came forward, period,'' he told the committee.
That was contradicted by Zaccardelli, who said Macaulay was transferred because he had made "errors of judgment'' and needed to move to a new job where he could restore his long-term career prospects.
"There are no punishment transfers in the RCMP,'' said the former commissioner -- a claim that drew guffaws from the public gallery at the hearing.
Denise Revine, for her part, suffered a fate worse than transfer. She was let go after 36 years of service, with the explanation that her post in the human resources branch had become redundant.
Zaccardelli chalked up the decision to a "reorganization'' of the branch but insisted he had nothing to do with the move.
Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day has called yet another investigation of the affair, to be headed by David Brown, a lawyer and former head of the Ontario Securities Commission.
The Conservative government has so far resisted opposition calls for a full-fledged public inquiry, but Day has held the door open to that possibility if Brown decides he can't get to the bottom of things.
