Public servants went golfing, horseback riding on bidder's tab

OTTAWA -- The winner of more than a $1 billion in federal contracts lavished free horseback rides, denim shirts, harbour tours and golf tournaments on public servants who evaluated competing bids.

Royal LePage won the lucrative relocation contracts in 2002 -- and again in 2004 after the bids were retendered due to conflict of interest allegations.

Internal investigation reports, unsealed as a result of a successful QMI Agency court challenge, also detailed bid team members' attendance at gala dinners -- "drinks, dinner, music and a small gift" -- and Christmas luncheons, which began after Royal LePage landed the relocation pilot project in 1999.

Court proceedings in a $62-million civil suit filed against the federal government by losing bidder Envoy Relocation Services resumed Monday, with testimony from investigation manager Michel Genest, who probed conflict of interest claims in the 2002 bid.

"It is my belief, based on my 26 years as a police officer in the RCMP investigating cases of corruption and more recently my last two years in the Audit and Ethics Branch of (Public Works), that these individuals have placed themselves in a position of a perceived conflict of interest," Genest wrote in a draft report dated Aug. 19, 2003.

"It appears that evaluation committee members may have put themselves in a vulnerable position when they accepted the gifts, hospitality and other benefits from Royal LePage."

Those sentences didn't appear in Genest's final Sept. 24, 2003 report.

Genest explained he had been using the strict RCMP standards for accepting hospitality, whereas existing guidelines allowed public servants to receive gifts valued at less than $50.

"I was obviously using the wrong standard," Genest said.

The free golf tournaments -- attendance in at least one case was authorized by a bid team member's superior -- were the only violations Genest found.

Genest's bosses read drafts of the report and suggested changes.

One handwritten annotation softened Genest's opinion of an employee's Caribbean cruise with Royal LePage vice-president Ray Belair.

"It may have given an appearance of a conflict of interest" became "I conclude that she provided an opportunity for an observer to judge that there was the appearance of a conflict of interest."

The court heard the employee paid for the cruise herself.

"I certainly did not disagree with what was in that paragraph," Genest told the court.

Original Article
Source: if press
Author: TONY SPEARS