MONTREAL — A former SNC-Lavalin vice-president found guilty of bribing foreign officials — including the son of late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi — and pocketing millions of dollars lost his appeal on Monday and was given 48 hours to report to prison.
Sami Bebawi, 76, appealed his 2019 conviction on the grounds that evidence gathered through an RCMP undercover operation that targeted his former lawyer should not have been admitted.
The Court of Appeal agreed with the trial judge that while police should have obtained judicial authorization earlier in their investigation, the evidence collected was admissible.
The trial judge ruled that the communications obtained from a wire tap of Bebawi's lawyer was not a professional secret. The wiretap was launched after a government witness told police that Bebawi had offered him a multimillion-dollar bribe to change his testimony.
As Bebawi's lawyer was part of a criminal plan to obstruct justice, that "annihilates any privilege attached to the professional secret," Justice François Doyon said, writing on behalf of the three-judge Court of Appeal panel.
Bebawi’s lawyers argued that some of the acts for which he was convicted shouldn't have been considered fraud because he didn't put his victim’s financial interests at risk, and as a result, they said the trial judge should have partially acquitted him.
The appeal panel also rejected that argument.
The Appeal Court highlighted the "colossal" kickbacks that Bebawi — while he was working for SNC-Lavalin — paid to Saadi Gadhafi, which included $40 million in cash and two yachts worth a total of $37 million.
"They created a system of corruption that brought them large sums of money through fictitious cost increases, which camouflaged large commissions from which they partly benefited. These fictitious price increases could have led to economic prejudice or, at least, to a risk of economic prejudice, which would jeopardize the pecuniary interests of the other contracting parties," Doyon wrote, adding that prejudice or risk of prejudice is an "essential element" of fraud.
The Appeal Court, however, gave Bebawi more time to pay a fine equivalent to the proceeds of his crimes. He had been ordered to pay the $24.69-million fine, in addition to $4 million that was already confiscated, or face an additional 10 years in prison.
Pleading that he only had $22.8 million left and was more than $100 million in debt, Bebawi had asked for a delay to pay the fine until 10 years after he is released from prison — and for the penalty for nonpayment to be reduced to five years in prison.
The Appeal Court gave Bebawi two years from Tuesday’s ruling to pay.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 14, 2023.
Jacob Serebrin, The Canadian Press
