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Synopsis
Recently, a commission of inquiry headed by Justice Jeffrey Oliphant began hearings in Ottawa. The focus: the cash payments of a few hundred thousand dollars former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney received from German dealmaker Karlheinz Schreiber.
But ironically, the Oliphant inquiry’s narrow focus may exclude any useful examination of the controversy that brought it all about. And that is what the fifth estate’s story, The Elephant in the Room, examines. In the mid-1980s, one of Schreiber’s clients, Airbus Industries, wanted to sell a fleet of passenger planes to Air Canada, then a crown corporation.
What happened during that deal and in the years that followed has become known as the Airbus scandal — $25 million in secret commissions, codenamed European bank accounts and questions, always more questions. Who knew what? When? And, ultimately, who did get all that money?
The stakes at the Oliphant inquiry are high: the reputation and legacy of a former prime minister and the future of the man who may have started it all, Karlheinz Schreiber.
As he has in previous investigations of the Airbus scandal, in The Elephant in the Room, Linden MacIntyre interviews key players involved in this political drama. The inquiry may be the last, best, chance to get answers to a lingering controversy. It remains to be seen if the questions will ever be asked. |
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About the Airbus Affair
 For more than a decade, the fifth estate has investigated rumours and allegations surrounding the 1988 sale of 34 Airbus A-320 jets to Air Canada and the mysterious dealmaker, Karlheinz Schreiber.
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