More Schreiber Revelations

To further pique our curiosity. As to why a prime minister of a country would allow himself to betray his public office in so injurious a manner. Completely morally adrift. Of this particular man it can be believed, albeit reluctantly. Yet other Canadian politicians displayed the great good sense of absenting themselves from this man's shady lobbying.

Which still does not quite explain the allure he held for other, respected elite politicians who still cling to support for what Karlheinz Schreiber represents as a human being.

There are no questions about whether they - respected as they are, having earned that respect - ever gained materially by their friendship of this man, through their active collaboration with him in gaining him access to higher-placed politicians such as the-then Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney.

It's entirely conceivable that this raffish urchin of a businessman simply charmed some of his friends with his undoubted wit and cosmopolitan-yet-mawkish airs. Regardless, there are questions which require responses.

In testifying for the fourth time before a special Commons committee, Mr. Schreiber revealed that the German company Thyssen had paid him $4-million in "success fees" - for enabling a successful conclusion to a business overture, when the Mulroney government had signed an undertaking in principle to allow Thyssen to build a plant in Nova Scotia.

It wasn't a done deal, however. Unbeknownst to Mr. Schreiber was the fact that despite the understanding in principle between the federal government, the provincial government and a newly-set up company Bear Head Industries, full ratification would never take place, even though the understanding was signed by three of Mr. Mulroney's cabinet ministers.

Despite which Mr. Mulroney allowed himself to be hired by Mr. Schreiber in 1993 as a consultant specifically for the project - which had been nixed. The money which would be paid to Mr. Mulroney, Mr. Schreiber pointed out to him, would be paid through commission money left in a Swiss account. It wasn't until 1996 that Mr. Schreiber learned that the Mulroney government had scrapped the project back in 1990.

Mr. Mulroney had originally testified that he had never had any business dealings with Mr. Schreiber, hardly knew the man, back during an RCMP investigation of his possible role in the Airbus affair, when it was felt he might have been implicated in bribe-taking, to ensure that Air Canada, then a Crown Corporation, selected Airbus, earning himself and possibly others a sizeable commission.

Yet there was Mr. Schreiber testifying under oath that his good friend, former cabinet minister Elmer MacKay accompanied him to 24 Sussex Drive - at the express invitation of Mr. Mulroney, for a shared breakfast. There has, to date, been no fly-on-the-wall come forward to elucidate on the occasion, nor to report the interesting conversations that may have taken place.

Possibly the most damning, in the opinion of some, and certainly the most intriguing element of this most current testimony is Mr. Schreiber's explanation that he had personally given $25,000 to charter airplanes for convention delegates to Quebec to attend the 1983 Conservative convention in Winnipeg, where then-prime minister Joe Clark was hoping for a sweeping vote of confidence.

And when he was denied that, although he did have a sufficiently-large number of supporting votes, he decided to call a leadership race.

Actually, Mr. Shreiber said that the chairman of Airbus Industrie, Franz Josef Strauss, also funded that particular enterprise, and that money came also from the German political party, the Christian Social Union. In words coined by NDP MP Pat Martin: "you helped buy a leadership race that created the next prime minister of Canada".

Why? It's hard not to identify the reason. It's just rather difficult to appraise it objectively. The truth does not always satisfy, nor does it adequately explain the evil men do in their craving for power and wealth.