Adscam Exec Pleads
Guilty
Former ad executive Jean
Lafleur, who spent time
in Costa Rica and
Belize, where he was
reported to be enjoying
expensive wines and
late-night parties in
resort towns running
from Canadian
authorities, turned
himself in to police.
Lafleur was sentenced to
four years in jail
yesterday and ordered to
pay back almost $1.6
million for bilking the
federal sponsorship
program, the sentence is
the harshest handed down
for sponsorship-related
fraud.
With time already
served, Lafleur has 42
months left in his
sentence.
He pleaded guilty in
April to 28 counts of
sponsorship-related
fraud after giving 76
fake bills to Charles
Guite, the bureaucrat
who was responsible for
the program in the
federal government's
Public Works Department.
During Justice John
Gomery's hearings into
the sponsorship scandal,
Lafleur achieved a
certain amount of
notoriety for his spotty
memory and the hefty
bills he charged for
little work.
He's the fifth person
charged in the scandal,
which was designed to
increase federal
government presence in
Quebec after the slim
federalist victory in
the 1995 sovereignty
referendum.
Others sentenced were
former ad men Jean
Brault and Paul Coffin
who were handed 30
months and 18 months
respectively. Guite was
sentenced to 42 months. |
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