That much is known. But we enter uncharted waters as we learn how this pelf was distributed: in cash. At first it was just a colourful footnote: $5,000 left on a restaurant table here, $10,000 stuffed in an envelope there, while talking of the Choo Choo Man and White Head. But as the days passed and the testimony progressed, we learned that these were not isolated transactions by fringe characters: cash was, it seems, the preferred medium of exchange of the Liberal Party of Canada, including senior members of the party hierarchy. Two former executive directors of the Liberals’ Quebec wing have now testified to giving or receiving great big wads of cash, in amounts that stagger the imagination: not just envelopes but suitcases full, as much as $200,000 at one go. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars were allegedly distributed in this way, to dozens of people -- that we know about.
We know why they did this: to escape detection. What’s not clear is how. Where does anyone get their hands on $200,000 in cash? You can’t just walk into a bank and cash a cheque for $200 grand, in small bills please, unmarked, and be sure to scramble the serial numbers, won’t you? Even if you make a lot of little withdrawals, there are bound to be questions asked. There are laws about these things. To scrape together that kind of cash without attracting attention, you have to draw from a large number of separate and unrelated sources, and do so in a way that does not leave a paper trail of its own. Or you have to know the kind of people who can do that for you.
As crooked as they seem to be, I somehow doubt that even Liberal party executives possess those kinds of skills. The picture of Marc-Yvan Côté -- a former provincial cabinet minister -- nervously spending the night with a suitcase stuffed with hundred-dollar bills before handing them out to candidates at a campaign rally in Jean Chretien’s riding is more comic than sinister. Likewise, I doubt Jacques Corriveau, cultured man that he is, would have been taught at the choir recitals and art openings he frequents how to convert the millions he received in federal contracts into the massive sums of cash he is alleged to have distributed. So I can only conclude that they outsourced the job. But to whom? Who has that sort of expertise? Who does business that way?
But enough of that. Here’s another, entirely unrelated question: Why was Daniel Dezainde so deathly afraid of Joe Morselli? Mr. Dezainde is the former head of the Liberal Party in Quebec who testified he was told Mr. Morselli, to whom he was introduced shortly after taking the job, was “the real boss” of the party, and that whatever he did, he should not cross him. Sometime later, having had the temerity to do just that, he found out why: though the precise wording of Mr. Morselli’s alleged threat -- “I declare war on you” -- is susceptible to various interpretations, the meaning Mr. Dezainde took from it was enough to persuade him to go over his life insurance, phone several friends advising them what to do “if anything happens to me” -- and to seek RCMP protection before he gave evidence. Just the memory of it, years after the fact, caused him to break down on the witness stand. I have it on good authority that Mr. Dezainde, a veteran of Liberal party politics, is not a man of faint constitution.
Yet Mr. Morselli, an unimposing man who is, at a guess, in his sixties, would seem to present a less-than-threatening figure. How did Mr. Dezainde imagine he could threaten his life? Why did he make jokes with a co-worker about who should be the first to start their car? It can’t have had anything to do with that incident in 1989 when Mr. Morselli’s car exploded in his Montreal driveway. After all, Mr. Morselli was the intended target of that attack, not the assailant. Could have happened to anybody.But enough of that. Here’s another, entirely unrelated question: Did anyone ever follow up on this story, of which I was lately reminded, from the Ottawa Citizen of September 8, 2000:
“Organized crime mobs are targeting Parliament and other Canadian institutions in an attempt to spread corruption and political instability, says the new head of the RCMP.
During a remarkably candid news conference, Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli said yesterday that criminal groups are focusing on Parliament, the courts and other institutions with the aim of "destabilizing" the political system.