Coffin Ban Lifted

Over local radio a few minutes ago. I'll update this post as I find links (or see them posted in the comments)...

National Post;

An advertising executive told the Gomery inquiry much of his $2.7 million in sponsorship income was based in part on false bills requested by program boss Chuck Guite. Paul Coffin's scathing indictment of the one-time bureaucrat emerged on Wednesday as Justice John Gomery lifted a publication ban on some of Coffin's testimony at the sponsorship hearings.

Gomery's ruling helped shed light on a lengthy trail of falsified paperwork and inflated bills for several files, including Jean Chretien's Clarity Act on Quebec separation.

Coffin singled out Guite and the bureaucrat's assistant, Huguette Tremblay, in a scheme to bill taxpayers for maximum, pre-set production fees that were paid regardless of whether his firm did any work.

He said Guite asked him to bill for hours worked even though Coffin's firm didn't keep time sheets.

Coffin, who has been charged with 18 fraud-related counts arising from the sponsorship program, testified that Tremblay's role was to press him to send in bills at the end of each fiscal year to meet his production budget. But he said the decision to create fake bills was his alone.

"I billed this way from Day One, unfortunately," Coffin told inquiry counsel Marie Cossette, referring to the date of his first sponsorship contracts in 1997.

Communication Coffin earned nearly $86,500 in commissions for a Clarity Act publicity campaign even though Coffin said he did little more than transfer bills to the government from subcontractors.

He said the stream of bogus bills began to flow from the first day his firm was chosen as part of a select group of Montreal ad agencies charged with managing sponsorship files in 1997.

[..]

Coffin's testimony is consistent with financial statements indicating sponsorship middlemen nearly always billed the maximum under the catch-all category "production costs and professional honorariums."

Coffin and fellow ad man Jean Lafleur have both said Public Works officials approved, and even encouraged, the massive fees each agency took for managing $250 million in sponsorship deals from 1997 to 2003.

In many cases the middlemen couldn't say what they did to earn the fees. Sometimes they billed for entertaining clients at hockey games or simply passing along paperwork and cheques. Coffin himself admitted he sometimes billed taxpayers for work done by his wife, who was not on his payroll.

Documents also show Coffin's production fees were sometimes up to three times the value of his sponsorship contracts.