THE Coverup

MULRONEY SPOKESPERSON: THERE NEVER WAS ANY MONEY Brian Mulroney spokesperson, Luc Lavoie, in conversation with fifth estate producer Harvey Cashore in 1999: "There never was any money ever." Watch clip.	A CUP OF COFFEE Brian Mulroney testifying at pre-trial proceedings in Montreal. Listen.	MANDATE AGREEMENT This document, according to Karlheinz Schreiber, was produced for him to agree with as a way of explaining the $300,000 he gave Brian Mulroney after he left office. Schreiber says he was asked to agree to it years later. He says he simply set it aside. See document.

THE MEMO A memo authored by Karlheinz Schreiber's Edmonton lawyer after he received a phone call from Brian Mulroney asking for Schreiber to provide a statement: “that at no time did Brian Mulroney solicit or receive compensation of any kind from Schreiber." See document.	VOLUNTARY DISCLOSURE In his most recent interview with the fifth estate, in 2007, Karlheinz Schreiber explains how he was approached to help Brian Mulroney with a tax problem. Watch clip.	THE REQUEST In his most recent interview with the fifth estate, in 2007, Karlheinz Schreiber describes how he was asked to provide a statement, “that at no time did Brian Mulroney solicit or receive compensation of any kind from Schreiber.” Watch clip.

According to documents obtained by the fight estate and an exclusive interview with Karlheinz Schriber there are now new details of an attempted cover-up to save Brian Mulroney’s reputation. It began just before the secret BRITAN account became public on the fifth estate.

On October 17, 1999 Brian Mulroney and one of his lawyers placed a series of phone calls to a lawyer in Edmonton, a member of Karlheinz Schreiber’s legal team. The former PM, himself a lawyer, had a highly unusual request for Robert Hladun: Mulroney wanted a written statement from Schreiber that “at no time did he ever solicit or receive” money from the German businessman. An unusual request because it simply wasn’t true. The request to deny what both knew to be true ended up on the desk of Edward Greenspan, a Schreiber lawyer in Toronto. It didn’t take him long to alert his client that they were in perilous territory. Schreiber got the message. “I was not prepared to do that because it was a clear request for, towards me to commit perjury,” Schreiber told the fifth estate in an interview. “And why would I do that?” Shreiber refused the request.

But then the Britan account, and those withdrawals adding up to $300,000, created a brand new headache for the former prime minister - an inconvenience called income tax. The payments, five years earlier, had been in cash. He hadn’t paid the taxes when he got the money. Now he made what’s called a voluntary disclosure. It’s a government program for people who fail to disclose all of their income to Revenue Canada. As long as the disclosure is determined to be voluntary, prosecution is avoided. But the taxman would want to know where the money came from, and what it was for.

“I learned this from my lawyer,” says Schreiber. “Imagine you are my lawyer and I tell you we need an affidavit from Schreiber that he never received, that he never gave any money to me. Two days later I tell you, you know what, call Revenue Canada, the two of us have to go there, I have to make a voluntary disclosure. I mean how in the name of God can you do this? I would be so embarrassed. I would hope the soil opens and I disappear to the middle of the earth.”

Next: Mulroney Talks