Crown prosecutors assigned to the fraud trial of former executives of SNC-Lavalin and the McGill University Health Centre are bracing for the possibility that defence lawyers will petition the court to toss out the case because it has dragged on for more than four years.
At a pre-trial conference scheduled for Friday, defence lawyers are expected to invoke the Jordan ruling by the Supreme Court last year, which set strict limits on the wait times for criminal trials.
The alleged MUHC conspiracy has been described by a provincial police detective as the “biggest corruption fraud in the history of Canada.”
Former SNC-Lavalin CEO Pierre Duhaime and Riadh Ben Aïssa, who once served as a vice-president of the engineering firm’s construction division, are accused of paying $22.5 million in bribes to win the contract to build the $1.3-billion MUHC superhospital.
Read more at Montreal Gazette
