In the week after former minister Helena Guergis resigned from the federal cabinet and was kicked out of the Conservative caucus, some allegations have begun to emerge.

Private investigator Derrick Snowdy is reported to have told a Conservative Party lawyer that his investigation into Toronto businessman Nazim Gillani had uncovered allegations of cocaine use and stock fraud involving Guergis and her husband, former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer. The lawyer apparently passed those on to the Prime Minister's Office.

The following is a partial transcript of an April 15 interview between CBC News’ Dave Seglins (DS) and Nazim Gillani spokesperson Brian Kilgore (BK):

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BK [describing a recent meeting with Gillani where they discussed media reports on the scandal]: We talked about all of the contentious issues: Were there really busty hookers at the dinner at the steakhouse down by the harbour?

DS: Were there?

Former minister Helena Guergis seen in the House of Commons prior to her ouster from cabinet and the Conservative caucus. (Canadian Press)

BK: No, there were not, There were three women there, none of whom were busty hookers, or unbusty hookers for that matter. One was a close friend of Nazim’s, and the other two were friends of hers. Was there a meeting with Helena Guergis? Yes there was, but there was only one. Where was it? We confirmed it was at the Sassafras restaurant in Yorkville during the film festival. We said, 'Have you seen Helena Guergis under other circumstances in other places?' And Nazim said, 'No I have not.' Because the story had run in the Toronto Star full of the accusations that are completely untrue about Gillani bragging about or boasting about having photographs, we explored that: No, there are no photographs of women at nightclubs, there are no photographs of women in strip clubs, there are no photographs of Helena Guergis and Rahim Jaffer with prostitutes or with cocaine or in any partying situation.

DS: And was there any attempt at blackmail, or a perception that there were those photos?

BK: No, but there was a story by Kevin Donovan in the Toronto Star yesterday, today, saying these photographs existed and quoting this so-called private eye named Derrick Snowdy.

DS: There's a lot to unravel here, so I just want to back up because there are two people that may or may not have met Mr. Gillani. First of all, the former minister Helena Guergis. The meeting at Sassafras that you say took place...

BK: Was a social meeting during the film festival. And you can think of her being there in the company of Mr. Jaffer, who knew Gillani, and Helena came along to the dinner, and that was the one and only time that Gillani met Helena Guergis.

DS: Was there cocaine use at that meeting?

BK: That was not a meeting, it was a dinner in the Sassafras restaurant, and either — no, or of course not.

DS: Does Nazim Gillani have any knowledge that Helena Guergis was involved in cocaine at all?

BK: He has — we talked about that — and the answer is, absolutely no information about that, certainly would not think about it, but no, I have no evidence, quoting him, I have no evidence, I’ve never seen that, there has never been any suggestion of that. But remember that Gillani only met her once.

DS: Rahim Jaffer was arrested by the Ontario Provincial Police in Palgrave in the fall of last year. They charged him with cocaine possession, claiming to have found a bag of cocaine in his pocket. Does Mr. Gillani have any knowledge of Mr. Jaffer using cocaine?

BK: You sound like you’re a lie-detector test guy. No he does not.

DS: Any knowledge of how that cocaine … the night which we're led to believe through the reports in the Toronto Star it was immediately after a meeting with Mr. Gillani that Mr. Jaffer is stopped by the police…

BK: No, Dave. What's immediately? How many hours passed? Certainly, a number of hours passed, and a lot of geography passed. But I did determine that when Mr. Jaffer left the steakhouse, he was dropped off in the southern part of Toronto, where his car was, contrary to a story that he had left his car at Gillani’s house in Etobicoke. He was in fact dropped off down by the lake, and where his own car was, or his wife’s car, and that is the car which was in fact the Ford Escape, according to several sources that I have read, and that was the car that he was in when he was stopped by police, and that was hours later and miles later.

DS: You indicated that your meeting with Mr. Gillani was to sort out what was accurate, what was inaccurate. What specifically has been accurate in the reportage?

BK: There was a dinner at the Harbour Castle Steakhouse, or the Harbour Sixty Steakhouse, so that was true.

DS: Was business discussed, and Mr. Jaffer's ability to get access to government?

BK: That was the first part of the discussion, was can Rahim Jaffer do things that would be to the benefit of Gillani and his associates. And Jaffer, and this was on his website although it may have been taken down since, portrayed himself as a government-relations expert, a former member of Parliament, he knows the people on Parliament Hill, and thus would be a good person to have onside when you were trying to get information conveyed from private businesses to governments. It’s not all that easy to reach people, and Jaffer knew people, and knew which people to reach.

DS: So according to Mr. Gillani what was expressly stated by Mr. Jaffer in terms of what he could offer?

BK: Well, "expressly stated," Dave, is one of those questions where, well, it was six months ago, and people weren’t taking notes, and it was a general broad conversation. So "expressly" is looking for hidden tape recorders, of which there weren’t any. Generally what was expressed was the same kind of services that were on Jaffer’s website, were services that he explained to Gillani were available if Gillani wanted to avail himself of those … such as general government-relations services … That said, in the world of things that were real, the next day Gillani wrote an email to a number of his associates, this is the email that you see mocked up in a fake version in the Toronto Star, because emails don’t look like that, so the email that was reproduced in the Star was not a reproduction but was in fact a piece of artwork.

DS: Fair enough, but the contents of it indicate that Mr Jaffer, according to Mr. Gillani, was going to open doors to power and the Prime Minister's Office.

BK: Well now, see, you’ve just added the "power" phrase in here, in a world where we’re trying to talk about what exactly was said, nevertheless,

DS: Ok, what was in the email?

BK: …nevertheless, in the email, the words in the email that we see in the Toronto Star are actual words, so it was just a fake piece of art, but the content of it is accurate, that leads you to an interesting discussion of journalistic ethics. That said, Gillani has, since the story first broke, said he was over-enthusiastic in the choice of phrases of "open up doors to the Prime Minister’s Office" or whatever the exact words were. He did not quote Jaffer in that, he paraphrased, and the paraphrasing was, to use words we like now, over-enthusiastic. He got caught up in the moment and exaggerated.

DS: Was Gillani exaggerating, or stretching the truth, or was he just misquoting claims by Rahim Jaffer?

BK: No, we looked back on it, and for several reasons when you go back and look back on it, we stick with: Mr. Gillani was over-enthusiastic. Nobody can open the doors to the Prime Minister’s Office when he was elected on the campaign of not being reachable through influence, and the results have been many stories that Jaffer and the prime minister are not the best of friends. So the credit or blame or responsibility for that phrase really does lie on Nazim Gillani.

DS: There's also been a great deal made about this private investigator who has reportedly brought allegations against Mr. Gillani to the attention of the Conservative [Party] lawyer, passed on [to] the PMO, now passed on [to] the RCMP. What light can you shed on that individual?

BK: We continue to learn things, watching television tonight, CBC, we learned that he’s extraordinarily deeply in debt, facing a bankruptcy. We have no indication that he, acting as a private investigator, was doing any investigation of Gillani. We are very puzzled as to where 19 months of investigation comes from. What we do know is that a person with the same name, and we believe to be the same person, was an investor in a company that Gillani was an investor in, and that Gillani probably met this man for no more than five minutes in a restaurant called the Spice Route … when a group of people met a group of people and they were introduced. So as far as we know, he was an investor in a company that Gillani was an investor in, he was not conducting a 19-month private investigation operation against Gillani.

DS: In an email exchange with that private investigator, Derrick Snowdy, we've put that to him, and he says he was never an investor in a company with Nazim Gillani.

BK: OK, well, there you go. Somebody has to get the papers out and look at that information.

DS: What was the name of company that you alleged that this man was an investor in?

BK: HD Retail Solutions.

DS: And was Mr. Gillani the principal in that company?

BK: I am not able to tell you details of corporate structure. I haven’t looked at the paperwork. The paperwork exists and I have not seen it myself, other than to see there is a binder and bunch of stuff in it, but I have not read the contents of the binder.

DS: One of the things that has been floated by the Toronto Star stories is an indication that there may be some evidence Mr. Gillani is apparently to have said to this private investigator while he was posing as an investor, or was an investor, indicating that there might be photographs of Rahim Jaffer and Helena Guergis in compromising social circles, situations where the presence of cocaine and/or hookers is present. It was an inference drawn from comments made that perhaps there was a possible plot to blackmail.

BK: You seem to be reading that very carefully, and early on in that there was the word “might.” If we need to parse the sentences, I have to get the Star and read what [reporter Kevin] Donovan wrote, and determine what Donovan said, what Donovan said Snowdy said, and what isn’t attributed to anybody.

DS: Let me ask then: was Mr. Gillani attempting to blackmail Rahim Jaffer?

BK: Of course not.

DS: Helena Guergis?

BK: But I would suggest that if you even want to ask the question, you only ask the question after you carefully review Snowdy as the source and Donovan as the reporter.

DS: What [do] you mean?

BK: When you ask the question, the question is asked in such a manner that it actually is accusatory. So, let me put it this way, and I thought I had said this earlier on, but maybe it was in an interview with somebody else. Talking to Mr. Gillani today, I asked him if he knew anything about any photographs or any events at which photographs might have been taken involving Jaffer, Guergis, cocaine, partying, hookers or anything along those lines, i.e. the stuff that Donovan wrote that Snowdy talked about, and the answer from Gillani was, no, he knew absolutely nothing about any of that. Did not have photographs and was never in a situation where he would have been able to talk to Snowdy about that, bearing in mind that, as far as he knows, he only met Snowdy once, and that was in the Spice Route restaurant. Is that clear enough for you? It gets complicated and goes around in circles.

DS: So given all this, what is Nazim Gillani's reaction to being presented in this light in the national media?

BK: He's devastated. His business has been destroyed by bad reporting in the Toronto Star.