The venue was the same and both events had a German connection. But the results were decidedly different.

On February 20, Brian Mulroney returned to the government conference centre off Parliament Hill, to the applause of more than 400 people.

He had come to discuss and be recognised for the significant role he played in the reunification of Germany 20 years earlier.

Flash forward to Monday of this week, in a conference room just down the hall from where that first welcome reverberated.

This time, Mulroney's reputation was sliced, diced and skewered by the man who conducted a judicial inquiry into the former prime minister's business arrangements with Canadian-German businessman and lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber.

Justice Jeffrey Oliphant was appointed to look into the controversial dealings between the two men after Mulroney admitted he had accepted large amounts of cash in three separate payments from Schreiber in hotel rooms in Montreal and New York.

Justice Jeffrey Oliphant, delivering his report on the Mulroney-Schreiber affair May 31, 2010 in Ottawa. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

It also came to light that most of the money was kept in a safe in his Montreal home and the rest in a safety deposit box in a New York bank, where he did not pay tax on it until several years after receiving it.

An ironic footnote to all this: In his testimony before a parliamentary committee in December 2007, Schreiber had said one of the reasons he wanted to help Mulroney, after his time as prime minister, was because of the role he played in reuniting Germany.

'Inappropriate'

In his report Oliphant confirmed all of the details already known in this case but couldn't add much clarity to some of the issues that are still in doubt.

For instance, did Mulroney receive $300,000 in payments, as Schreiber contends; or $225,000, as Mulroney says it was?

Ultimately, Oliphant concluded, it didn't really matter. Whatever the amount, accepting money in cash without any kind of paper trail, instead of demanding a cheque, giving a receipt or putting the money through his consulting company or a bank account, meant that both Mulroney and Schreiber were trying to keep their arrangement secret.

And that, said the judge, was inappropriate behaviour for a former prime minister.

Under oath

Indeed, Oliphant was most scathing on what has become the flashpoint for this saga: Mulroney's testimony under oath in 1996 when he was suing the federal government.

Brian Mulroney, testifying at Oliphant inquiry on May 18, 2009. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

That was when justice officials had alleged, in a letter to Swiss authorities, that Mulroney may have profited illegally from the purchase of 34 Air Canada passenger jets from the European consortium that employed Schreiber as a lobbyist and agent.

At that point, when testifying, Mulroney had already accepted the three cash payments from Schreiber, the most recent just over a year earlier.

But when answering a government lawyer's question, Mulroney testified that, after leaving office, his relationship with Schreiber had been limited to having a few cups of coffee with him, when the lobbyist was passing through Montreal.

In the aftermath of that testimony, the government defence folded and an arbitrator awarded Mulroney $2.1 million for his costs in the lawsuit.

It was only a number of years later that lawyer and author William Kaplan, who had already written an exculpatory book about Mulroney and Airbus, found out about the payments and blew the whistle in articles in the Globe and Mail.

Those articles, combined with years of investigative work by the CBC's Fifth Estate team of Harvey Cashore and Lynden MacIntyre, peeled away much of the secrecy around the dealings between the two men and led ultimately to the Oliphant inquiry where the justice did not mince words.

Of Mulroney's 1996 testimony under oath, Oliphant wrote: "Mr. Mulroney's response would lead anyone not knowing the true situation about his dealings with Mr. Schreiber or the money he had received from Mr. Schreiber to believe that the post-prime ministerial contact consisted of a couple of brief meetings to have a cup of coffee.

"For Mr. Mulroney to attempt to justify his failure to make disclosure in those circumstances by asserting that Mr. Sheppard [the government lawyer] did not ask the correct question is, in my view, patently absurd.

"Mr. Mulroney's answer to Mr. Sheppard's question failed to disclose appropriately the facts of which Mr. Mulroney was well aware, when such disclosure was clearly called for. And that answer was not forthcoming."

Timing

That finding has some parliamentarians demanding that the former prime minister pay back the $2.1 million he received after that misleading testimony.

Karlheinz Schreiber, in July 2009, at the last day of the Oliphant inquiry. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

But the Oliphant findings were not all damaging to Mulroney.

The judge decided that the two men entered into a business arrangement in August 1993, when Mulroney was still an MP, finishing up his term, but no longer prime minister.

That was the meeting where Mulroney accepted the first envelope of cash.

The two had also met two months earlier, in June, when Mulroney was still PM. A finding that the deal had been struck then would have been more serious. But since no cash, no deal, Oliphant ruled.

The judge also noted that Schreiber was still paying Mulroney when the Conservatives were no longer in power, when he would not have any influence over the successor, Liberal government.

In the process, he accepted Mulroney's version of events, that he was hired to promote the sale of proposed Canadian-made armoured vehicles overseas, particularly to countries that were members of the UN Security Council.

Oliphant did that, although he admitted there was no evidence that Mulroney had ever done any lobbying along those lines, that is, to sell vehicles that hadn't been built from a plant that hadn't been constructed.

Of course, while Oliphant seems clear on what the payments were for, others may share the view expressed by Bloc MP Carole Lavallée in December 2007 when Mulroney first testified before the Commons ethics committee.

"He says it was for one thing. You say it was for another. Perhaps it was for neither, but something else altogether."

Maybe we will never really know.