/sarc
Guess it's not time yet to shelve this picture....
.... looks like it's still going to be relevant for along time ...
Posted on 06/01/2006 11:31:01 AM PDT by Clive
Volpe returns controversial donations
View Larger Image Joe Volpe. Photograph by : Canadian Press/Jonathan Hayward
Article Tools OTTAWA -- Joe Volpe has moved to quell a controversy battering his Liberal leadership campaign, announcing Thursday he's returned $27,000 in donations from the children of current and former drug company executives.
Volpe spokesman Corey Hobbs said contributions from five donors, all under age 18, have been returned. Each had given $5,400, the legal maximum.
Hobbs would not name the donors who've been reimbursed. But they presumably include the 11-year-old twins and 14-year-old son of former Apotex Inc. vice-president Allen Shechtman.
Volpe will not return another $81,000 in donations from 15 current and former executives at the pharmaceutical firm, their spouses and adult children. And his campaign continues to insist he's done nothing wrong.
''Let's be clear here,'' Hobbs said. ''All the donations for our campaign have been in compliance with the law.''
He said the youngsters were reimbursed simply because ''we wanted to clear the air on the perception out there.''
Volpe has been at the centre of controversy since The Canadian Press reported on the donations last week. New Democrat MP Pat Martin has asked Canada's elections commissioner to investigate the matter to determine whether the donations are an attempt to circumvent the law banning corporate donations to leadership contestants.
While companies may not give money, individuals, including a company's executives, employees and family members, are each entitled to give up to $5,400.
There is no age limit on donors. However, the law includes several clauses making it a crime for any individual to ''act in collusion'' with others to skirt the law.
Among other things, it is illegal to conceal the identity of donors, to compensate a person for making a donation, or to make a donation that actually comes from another person.
Volpe, one of 11 Liberal leadership contenders, is scrambling to contain the damage from the donation controversy.
On Wednesday, his lawyer sent Martin a letter, threatening a libel suit if the New Democrat MP did not immediately retract his accusation that Volpe perpetrated a ''deliberate and well-orchestrated fraud'' to circumvent the ban on corporate donations.
Martin offered an apology of sorts and a clarification.
''If I did overstate things by saying that this categorically is fraud, I meant to say that it looks like fraud and that the elections commissioner is justified in opening an investigation,'' Martin said.
Still, Martin maintained it's ''perfectly reasonable to assume that somebody has laundered money through their children's bank accounts in order to circumvent the donation limits of the Elections Act and it's my right and my job as a member of Parliament to blow the whistle on that.''
The campaign finance law passed by its own party in a salvage job following the Adscam scandal targetted, among other questionable practices, laundering corporate donations through execurives and their family members.
This has a distinct aroma of just such a practice. More than $100,000, amounting to 70 percent of the funds raised by his campaign came from executives and family members of one generic drug manufacturer, including teenage children, two of whom were just shy of their 12th birthday/
So, instead of divesting his campaign of the whole of the more than $100,000, he returns only that part which came from the minors.
Reminds me of the monkey trap. That was a jar containing bait attractive to monkeys. The opening of the jar was sized such that a monkey could get his open hand into the jar but could not withdraw his closed fist. So once he had grabbed the bait he could not escape unless he let go of it.
Leftists on the run always makes for enjoyable reading!
:-)
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