Political scandal worsens for Canada’s Justin Trudeau

A political firestorm surrounding Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau became more damaging Wednesday, as his ex-justice minister accused his top aides of repeatedly pressuring her to drop the prosecution of a global engineering and construction firm…

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The former justice minister recounted how senior government officials, mostly from Mr. Trudeau’s office, attempted to persuade her to order prosecutors to cut a plea deal with SNC-Lavalin, which is based in the politically important province of Quebec. A plea deal would have allowed SNC-Lavalin to avoid a decadelong ban on bidding on government contracts in Canada and elsewhere. These make up a significant portion of the company’s revenue…

Ms. Wilson-Raybould said Mr. Trudeau encouraged her in a Sept. 17 meeting to “find a solution here for SNC-Lavalin, saying that if there was no [plea deal] there would be many jobs lost and SNC-Lavalin would move [its headquarters] from Montreal.” She said she told Mr. Trudeau that she had done her due diligence on SNC-Lavalin and she wasn’t going to interfere in a decision by prosecutors to not pursue a plea deal with the company.

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