OTTAWA — Former prime minister Brian Mulroney used his former solicitor-general in a "set-up," Karlheinz Schreiber told the House of Commons ethics committee yesterday, explaining that Elmer MacKay persuaded Mr. Schreiber to apologize in writing to Mr. Mulroney on the false belief that it would end Mr. Schreiber's impending extradition to Germany.
In the summer of 2006, Mr. Schreiber received an e-mail from Mr. MacKay that included a draft apology that was supposed to be sent to Mr. Mulroney, Mr. Schreiber told the committee.
The e-mail, which was sent from the e-mail address sharonmackay923@hotmail.com to Mr. Schreiber's wife Barbel Schreiber, was published in yesterday's Globe and Mail.
The German-Canadian businessman told the committee yesterday that he was told that Mr. Mulroney needed the apology "so badly to prove" to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that Mr. Mulroney and Mr. Schreiber were on good terms.
In return for the letter, the federal Justice Department was supposed to "do the right thing" and end its efforts to send him back to Germany, Mr. Schreiber said. Since 1999, the Justice Department has been fighting, on behalf of the German government, to send Mr. Schreiber to his native country on charges of bribery, fraud and tax evasion.
A month after Mr. Schreiber received the e-mail, he sent a modified version of the apology to Mr. Mulroney - but the Justice Department did not relent.
"So, it was very clear that whole thing was a set-up," Mr. Schreiber told the committee.
Mr. Schreiber was told that Mr. Mulroney showed the letter to Mr. Harper during a meeting at the official prime minister's residence at Harrington Lake in August of 2006, and "the message was very well received," he said yesterday.
Since then, Mr. Mulroney and his spokesman Luc Lavoie have contacted journalists and quoted from the letter of apology, citing it as evidence that Mr. Schreiber's cash payments were proper and that Mr. Schreiber has been inconsistent.
Mr. MacKay has refused to speak about the e-mail. His wife Sharon MacKay did not respond to messages that were left with her husband.
"I have no comment to make about Brian Mulroney or Karlheinz Schreiber or any letter. I'm not going to say anything about it - whether I talked to either of them, or both of them," Mr. MacKay said this week when The Globe and CBC's fifth estate questioned him about his alleged role in the letter.
Peter MacKay, the current defence minister and son of Elmer, when asked by CTV yesterday about his father's role, said: "There's an independent adviser set up. It has nothing to do with me."
Mr. Mulroney has also denied, through his spokesman Mr. Lavoie, of having any advance knowledge of the letter before it arrived in the mail for him.
Mr. Schreiber told the committee yesterday that he was reluctant to draw Elmer MacKay into the ongoing controversy surrounding his relationship with Mr. Mulroney. He has been friends with Mr. MacKay since the 1980s, when Mr. Schreiber was hoping to land government contracts for his European clients and Mr. MacKay was becoming an important member of Mr. Mulroney's cabinet. Mr. Schreiber also helped arrange for Mr. MacKay's son Peter to work in Germany for Thyssen AG, an industrial company that Mr. Schreiber has represented in the past.
Mr. Schreiber described the elder MacKay yesterday as "one of the nicest people I know" and a "hell of a good friend." He told the committee that he didn't believe that Mr. MacKay had ulterior motives in the "set-up."
"He had nothing in mind but helping me," Mr. Schreiber said.
