Former deputy Quebec premier Nathalie Normandeau and six other people charged with fraud-related offences will not have a preliminary hearing and will instead go straight to trial.
The Crown today did not specify why it is proceeding with a preferred indictment, which allows it to bypass the preliminary hearing.
Normandeau is charged with conspiracy, corruption, breach of trust and fraud in a scheme in which political financing and gifts were allegedly exchanged for lucrative government contracts between 2000 and 2012. She and her co-accused were arrested in March 2016.
Between 1998 and 2011 Normandeau served as a Liberal member of the legislature for a riding on the Gaspe peninsula and later served as the deputy premier from 2007 to 2011.
Her criminal case is set to resume in September.
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