Political and criminal law experts agree one thing is clear in the Conservative whodunnit that grips Ottawa: Simcoe-Grey, Ont., MP Helen Guergis has likely been destroyed politically and her reputation shredded, despite the absence so far of any trial, conviction, or even specific charges.
The machine-gun speed with which stunning allegations erupted over the past two weeks of alleged drug use by Ms. Guergis and her former-MP husband Rahim Jaffer, offshore bank accounts and sex play with "high class escorts" has prompted one of Canada's best-known political historians and a high-profile Toronto defence lawyer to accuse Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) of not just rushing to judgment, but rocketing there.
"I think she's been convicted without trial," University of Toronto political scientist Peter Russell told The Hill Times.
And—according to news accounts and documents unearthed in the scandal's stampede last week—the sentence was based on the word of an obscure and bankrupt private eye whose only previous claim to fame was a short-lived Toronto Star story about his plan to evade several thousand dollars worth of fines for unpaid parking tickets.
"There has been a very significant rush to judgment in this case," said Frank Addario, immediate past president of the Criminal Lawyers Association. "The whiff of scandal has got everyone overheated. Everyone's perspective on this needs to be tempered by an understanding that her side of the story has yet to be told. It may turn out that the allegations are wildly inaccurate or baseless, or rooted on a completely unreliable source, or constructed."
Ottawa pollster Nik Nanos agrees that whatever happens—even if Ms. Guergis is eventually cleared of unstated allegations that led Prime Minister Harper to eject her from the Conservative caucus and send her case off to the federal ethics commissioner as well as the RCMP—her political career may be finished.
"The thing that hasn't been really talked about is that by expelling her from caucus, she basically loses protection as a candidate, which means her riding is now open season for a nomination challenge," Mr. Nanos told The Hill Times.
"Whether it's fair or unfair, the allegations are damaging enough to do serious harm to her personal reputation and her political clout, so to speak, in her riding," he added.
The day after an April 8 Toronto Star report by Kevin Donovan containing allegations Mr. Jaffer had been partying with a high-flying accused fraud artist with criminal ties the night he was charged with cocaine possession and drunk driving on his way home to Ms. Guergis last September, Prime Minister Harper was outwardly cool as a cucumber when he announced he was calling in the Mounties, ethics commissioner Mary Dawson and turning Ms. Guergis into an Independent MP in the Commons.
There was no hint the Prime Minister's sudden and stunning actions were based on the word of a private eye named Derrick Snowdy, who allegedly had been investigating one of Mr. Jaffer's associates, flashy Toronto businessman Nazim Gillani, when he also came across unseemly information about Mr. Jaffer and Ms. Guergis. It included their alleged cocaine partying with escorts, captured apparently on a cell-phone camera, and the claim Mr. Gillani had reserved three companies in tax-haven Belize for Ms. Guergis and her husband.
As if to confirm, or make more believable, the tax-haven scheme, the media feeding frenzy later unearthed photos, from federal government web archives no less, of Mr. Jaffer and Ms. Geurgis, then a junior foreign minister, checking out Canadian aid projects in Belize itself in 2008.
The Toronto Star subsequently reported Ms. Guergis had also dined with Mr. Gillani and—as the scandal assumed proportions worth putting in a dime novel, with Prime Minister Harper's office at one point admitting he had not actually provided Ms. Dawson with any specific allegations of conflict violations or even specifically asked her to investigate—the newspaper eventually identified Mr. Snowdy as the private detective who had gone to the Conservative Party with the goods on Ms. Guergis.
But even then, a significant and as yet unanswered question popped up: Who exactly was Mr. Snowdy, whose name does not appear on Canada 411, either by personal listing or business, and why would he take intelligence he had gathered for a client, apparently a businessman who had been shafted by Mr. Gillani, to the Conservative Party?
The Star said Mr. Snowdy began investigating Mr. Gillani in early 2009, hired by a man who lost money in one of Mr. Gillani's deals. But the CBC uncovered court documents that showed Mr. Snowdy declared bankruptcy in August, 2009, his debts of $13-million heavily outweighing his assets of $11,379.
One of the puzzles at the centre of Mr. Jaffer's role in the mystery had been the unknown reasons behind his narrow escape last month from the September cocaine and drunk driving charges. After private discussions between his lawyer and provincial prosecutors, Mr. Jaffer pleaded guilty to a single and significantly lesser charge of careless driving, and walked freely out of the Orangeville, Ont., courthouse after paying a slap-on-the-wrist fine of $500.
The deal sparked outraged allegations of cosy arrangements and connections across the country, but there was no hint of what went on behind closed doors until The Star's first story on Mr. Jaffer, which mentioned, far down in the report, that some of Mr. Gillani's former associates were speculating Mr. Jaffer had "rolled over" on Mr. Gillani, by providing evidence in return for a break on the drug and drunk-driving charges. Finally, a week after that story, the CBC reported, without naming sources, that Ontario Provincial Police officers north of Toronto had violated Mr. Jaffer's legal rights, and also conducted an improper and embarrassing body search.
Brian Kilgore, a Toronto man Mr. Gillani announced as his "communications counsel" after the affair broke open, denied Mr. Gillani hired Mr. Snowdy, possibly to pin something on Mr. Jaffer, and said he did not know who might have hired him, if anyone.
"Gillani didn't hire Snowdy," Mr. Kilgore told The Hill Times. "We don't know who hired Snowdy, but we do raise the question of whether anybody hired Mr. Snowdy, or whether Snowdy was just doing this on his own. Snowdy was an investor in a company that Gillani was an investor in, but we don't know much more than that."
Mr. Kilgore dismissed the speculation in The Star story that Mr. Jaffer's break on his own criminal charges was a reward for passing over evidence on Mr. Gillani. "The CBC thing to me was very clear, that Caledon (Ont.) cops f----d the investigation. Are you suggesting Jaffer would then be frightened of Gillani because Donovan wrote that Jaffer rolled over?"
On the weekend, CBC aired a report with Mr. Snowdy identifying his "primary" client in the case as Dennis Garces, who had invested in a company with Mr. Gilani. The CBC story cleared up part of the mystery, but raised other questions.
Mr. Snowdy told CBC he had never seen photos of Mr. Jaffer and Ms. Guergis partying with escorts, that only Mr. Gillani told him Mr. Jaffer and Ms. Guergis had reserved shell companies in Belize and, among other things, that he began his offer of information to the Conservatives with an email to his MP, Labour Minister Lisa Rait. Mr. Snowdy also showed the CBC what he said was his Conservative party membership card and said that he had advised his "riding executive" he had permission to release information to the Conservative party.
Evidence of a possible conflict of interest on the part of Ms. Guergis finally appeared at the end of the week in a Toronto Star story about a letter she wrote to her cousin, then the head of Simcoe County's municipal council, promoting a waste management company Mr. Gillani and Mr. Jaffer were wooing.
But none of the key elements of the CBC information, or the waste management letter, was in Prime Minister Harper's hands when he expelled Ms. Guergis from his parliamentary caucus.
"I think the principle that you're innocent until proven guilty, that should apply to Members of Parliament and the government as much as to everybody else," political scientist Mr. Russell said.
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