Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Railgate Re-Rising...When Is A Loan Not A Loan?


Apparently, When It Is A 'Contingent' One.


Via the Twittmachine, here is the still somewhat slightly conflicty Mr. Stephen Smart, of the CBC, on Mr. John van Dongen's Railgate 'indemnity' statements in the Ledge yesterday:


Well...

Here's the thing....

This is old news.

Specifically, just in case the good Mr. Smart missed it back in the days he was helping to keep Robin Mathews from taking a tape recorder into the Railgate courtroom (thanks Mary!) the loan, or shall we say 'liability', was already discussed 'round these here 'cultish parts.

And we have the archives to prove it....

Specifically, here's what we had to say (with the Dean, Vaughn Palmer's,  help) about the matter way back in late October of 2010....

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Saturday, October 23, 2010


Cutting The Cabinet Out Of RailGate's Six Million Dollar Straw Man

AllTheTechnicalities
ThatFitVille

According to Vaughn Palmer, Rafe Mair is wrong.

Why?

Well, apparently due to (another!) pre-planned indemnity double-down, Gordon Campbell and his cabinet are off the hook because they did not have to directly approve the six million dollars required to buy-off to Mr. Basi and Mr. Virk (and their lawyers).

Here is Mr. Palmer's explanation:

"...But the more problematic part of the deal for the Liberals was the second line of decision-making, namely to forgo any attempt to recover the $6 million advanced by the Crown to cover the cost of Basi's and Virk's legal defence.

The special prosecutor had nothing to do with that part of the deal. It was made in Victoria by deputy minister of finance Graham Whitmarsh in concert with deputy attorney-general David Loukidelis.....


{snippety doo-dah}

...The deputy duo acted under the authority of the Financial Administration Act, de Jong added, which brought a provocative e-mail from a reader.

On what authority? he asked, noting that the act explicitly states that only the cabinet can forgive "a debt or obligation to the government if the amount forgiven is $100,000 or more."

The amount forgiven here exceeded that threshold by a factor of 60. But no cabinet order was forthcoming because the amount was not, technically, a debt. It could have been, if the accused had been convicted and the Crown had proceeded to try to recover the legal fees.

But when the decision was made, the outstanding legal bills were only a contingent liability, advanced by way of indemnity, and cancellable by the deputy minister of finance under his standing authority under the act. Whitmarsh, acting on the recommendation of Loukidelis, signed off on all the paper work.

The cabinet was thus out of the loop, which is surely preferable to having ministers make the call on any aspect of the deal to end this case....."


How convienient.

But here's the thing.

Mr Whitmarsh is Mr. Campbell's and, dare I suggest, Mr. Martyn Brown's man over at Finance.

So.

Has anyone asked the good Mr. Whitmarsh if he ever spoke to Mr. Campbell or Mr. Brown about this matter, regarding the details when the deal went down, or, and this is very important, when indemnity technicality was worked out BEFORE the deal itself was even conceived of?

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Oh......And it was good to see that Les Leyne is finally starting to keep up......What the heckfire am I talking about?.....Well, the other day Mr. Leyne didn't even mention Mr. Whitmarsh as being part of the dynamic duo when he was on the Ceeb with the the Puffmaster Flash.....But in his column today he at least acknowledged Mr. Whitmarsh's involvement...No discussion, of course, of the implications however......
And for the record....it was very nice to see Mr. Palmer follow-up on something that has been discussed, in considerable detail, by the 'Wingnuts in the Blogosphere'...Credit where credit is due, and all that....Unless, of course, Mr. Palmer's E-mail correspondent was named 'Anonymous'....

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