June 11, 1983: Brian Mulroney beats Joe Clark to become leader of the Conservative party. Two months later, he is elected to parliament in the Nova Scotia riding of Central Nova.
September 4, 1984: The Progressive Conservative party wins the federal election by a landslide.
February 19, 1985: International Aircraft Leasing (IAL), makes a secret deal with Messerschmitt Bolkow-Blohm (MBB), a German aircraft manufacturer, to sell helicopters to the Canadian government. IAL is a German shell company founded by German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber and his Swiss accountant Giorgio Pelossi.
March 7, 1985: IAL makes a deal with Airbus Industrie that awards IAL commissions of up to three per cent on all planes sold to Canada.
March 12, 1985: The federal government fires the Air Canada board of directors and appoints new members, one of which is Frank Moores, former premier of Newfoundland.
September 6, 1985: Moores resigns from the board of Air Canada.
November 6, 1985: Schreiber launches Bear Head Industries in Canada to lobby for German company Thyssen Industries’ proposal to build a light-armoured vehicle factory at Bear Head in Nova Scotia.
June 1986: The Canadian government signs a contract with MCL, a Canadian subsidiary of MBB, to buy 12 helicopters. The contract prohibits commissions.
July 20, 1988: Air Canada announces a deal to buy 34 Airbus A320 airplanes from Airbus. The total cost of the deal is $1.8 billion.
Boeing believes commissions were paid by Airbus and launches an investigation into the deal. The FBI and the RCMP follow with their own investigations.
September 27, 1988: Thyssen receives an “understanding in principle” from the Canadian government, regarding the light-armoured vehicle factory in Nova Scotia known as the Bear Head project. Thyssen then pays IAL $2 million.
October 20, 1988: A Swiss bank account of Schreiber’s receives its first Airbus deposit totalling CDN $658,735.
November 21, 1988: The Progressive Conservatives are re-elected.
December 16, 1992: Schreiber’s Albertan lawyer Robert Hladun meets with Pelossi in Switzerland. Pelossi asks for $3 million from Schreiber that he claims to have earned as Schreiber’s business partner. Pelossi threatens to publicize Schreiber’s secret commission money if he is not paid, but Schreiber refuses.
June 9, 1993: Mulroney resigns the leadership of the Progressive Conservative party.
June 23, 1993: Schreiber meets with Mulroney at the prime minister’s property at Harrington Lake.
June 25, 1993: Mulroney formally resigns as prime minister.
July 26, 1993: Schreiber transfers $500,000 into a Swiss bank account called “Britan.” The next day, $100,000 is withdrawn from the account in Zurich. Schreiber says later that he put the cash in an envelope and gave it to Mulroney in Montreal.
November 3, 1993: Another $100,000 is withdrawn from the Britan account, and Schreiber says that he gave the money to Mulroney on December 18.
July 21, 1994: Another $50,000 is withdrawn from the Britan account.
November 1994: Pelossi goes to the media with proof that Airbus gave secret commissions in the deal with Air Canada, that Thyssen paid IAL for the Bear Head project and that MBB paid commissions in its deal with the Canadian government.
November 21, 1994: Schreiber withdraws $50,000 from the Britan account. His appointment book for the day reads “Britan 50″ and “Pierre, NY.”
December 8, 1994: Schreiber meets Mulroney at the Pierre Hotel in New York. He says he gave Mulroney $100,000.
September 29, 1995: The Justice Department requests the help of Swiss authorities in investigating the dealings between Schreiber, Mulroney and Moores.
November 18, 1995: Mulroney is linked to the Airbus investigation in a newspaper report. Two days later, Mulroney launches a $50-million defamation suit against the Canadian government. The lawsuit ends in a settlement.
August 31, 1999: Schreiber is arrested in Toronto in connection with a German arrest warrant for tax evasion. He is later released on bond.
November 8, 2007: Schreiber alleges he made a $300,000 lobbying agreement with Mulroney in Harrington Lake in 1993.
November 9, 2007: Prime Minster Stephen Harper announces the launch of an independent review of corruption allegations surrounding Mulroney and Schreiber. Mulroney calls for an inquiry.
November 13, 2007: Harper announces the launch of an inquiry.
December 13, 2007: Mulroney appears before the Commons ethics committee and denies he promoted Schreiber’s business affairs while prime minister.
March 30, 2009: Public inquiry begins. Appointed to conduct the inquiry is Justice Jeffrey Oliphant. Oliphant, 64, is associate chief justice of Manitoba’s Court of Queen’s Bench.
April 15, 2009: Schreiber testifies that Mulroney asked during a 1998 meeting in a Swiss hotel about whether there was any evidence he had received money from the German-Canadian dealmaker. Schreiber says he advised Mulroney there was no evidence of the transactions.
April 21, 2009: Greg Alford, former vice-president of Bear Head Industries, testifies that he was not told former prime minister Brian Mulroney had been hired in 1993 as a lobbyist.
April 23, 2009: William Kaplan, a lawyer and author of a subsequent book that explores the cash payments, tells a federal inquiry Mulroney tried to get him to drop the publication of a newspaper story in 2003 that for the first time disclosed the cash payments he accepted from Karlheinz Schreiber.
April 29, 2009: Former prime minister Kim Campbell tells the inquiry that Mulroney did not encourage her before or after he left office to pursue a proposal to build light-armoured vehicles in Canada. She also says she had no recollection of the proposal known as the Bear Head project, during her time as defence minister and her brief stint as prime minister in 1993.
April 30, 2009: Mulroney’s former chief of staff Norman Spector testifies at the enquiry that the number of meetings Schreiber had with Mulroney was unusually high.
May 6, 2009: Forensic auditor Steven Whitla lays out the results of the investigation by Navigant Consulting during an appearance before the inquiry. Whitla and the auditing team concluded that Airbus commissions were likely a large source of the funds that Schreiber drew upon to make cash payments to Mulroney.
May 7, 2009: Justice Jeffrey Oliphant says that after four weeks of testimony, he remains puzzled by the huge dollar amounts paid to those who promoted a plan by Thyssen AG of Germany to build armoured vehicles in Canada.
May 12, 2009: Mulroney tells the federal inquiry that he regrets his cash transactions with Schreiber and the years of pain the fallout over their relationship has caused him and his family. He insists he did nothing illegal in his business dealings with the German-born lobbyist.
May 21, 2009: The favourable tax deal that former Mulroney’s lawyer scored for him when he finally declared to tax authorities his cash payments from Schreiber is no longer available, the federal inquiry is told.
June 1, 2009: The judge heading the inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber affair says it would be a "travesty of justice" if the German-Canadian businessman was extradited to Germany before the commission finished its work.
July 5, 2009: Schreiber issues the Conservative government a new challenge: produce a paper trail proving Canada has a valid and enforceable extradition treaty with Germany or allow him to stay in Canada until it has one.
July 10, 2009: The German-Canadian businessperson loses his latest legal attempt to avoid extradition to Germany, where he’s facing charges of bribery, fraud and tax evasion.
August 2, 2009: Schreiber is extradited to Germany, ending his 10-year battle against Germany’s attempt to return the controversial businessman to his native country to face multiple criminal charges.
January 18, 2010: Schreiber goes on trial on charges of tax evasion, fraud and bribery from a funding scandal that rocked Germany’s government. He is accused of failing to declare millions from kickbacks he received for the sale of helicopters to Canada’s coast guard, Airbus planes to Thailand and Canada and tanks to Saudi Arabia in the 1990s.
May 5, 2010: A German court convicts Schreiber, 76, on six counts of tax evasion between 1988 and 1993. He is sentenced to eight years in prison.
May 31, 2010: Justice Jeffrey Oliphant has found former prime minister Brian Mulroney breached federal ethics guidelines in his once-secret business dealings with German-Canadian lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber.
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