Jacques Lamarre, then the CEO of SNC-Lavalin at the company’s boardroom in 2008, will lose his professional licence, a disciplinary council in Quebec ruled.John Morstad/The Globe and Mail
Quebec’s engineering order has ruled that former SNC-Lavalin chief executive Jacques Lamarre will lose his professional licence and must pay $75,000 in fines after being found guilty last year of several transgressions related to the company’s business dealings in Libya and political financing activities in Montreal.
The penalty was made public Wednesday by L’Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec’s disciplinary council, an independent administrative tribunal of the order that deals with complaints. It is based on a joint recommendation by lawyers for the order and Mr. Lamarre’s own legal counsel.
The sanction “reflects the gravity of the offences in question,” the council’s three members said in their decision.
Revoking the licence of an engineer is the most severe penalty the professional body can impose, though in this case it has no practical effect because Mr. Lamarre, 82, is retired. In August, he also stepped down as a member of the order, saying the trust he had in the organization was broken and that it had treated him unfairly.
Quebec engineering body finds former SNC-Lavalin CEO guilty on multiple counts of misconduct
In a written response Wednesday, Mr. Lamarre said he received the news of his sanction with profound disappointment. He said he always carried out his duties with the conviction that he was acting in the best interests of the company and with a commitment to serving the profession and Quebec society.
“I have had the privilege of an exceptional career, surrounded by remarkable women and men,” he said in the statement. “Today, I choose to remember what I have built, rather than what set me against others.”
He had the right to appeal the penalty and the guilty verdicts but confirmed he will not pursue that avenue.
The professional order began weighing Mr. Lamarre’s conduct in late 2024, including allegations that he authorized the purchase of a $25-million luxury yacht for the son of late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
At issue was whether the former executive infringed the organization’s code of ethics and professional duties in the early 2000s when he was CEO of SNC-Lavalin, now known as AtkinsRéalis Group Inc. ATRL-T
In all, 14 separate allegations were made against Mr. Lamarre as part of the disciplinary complaint, touching broadly on SNC-Lavalin’s business dealings in Libya. Among them: That he either gave instructions to buy the yacht for Saadi Gadhafi or could not have been unaware of that purchase given that he was CEO at the time.
In a decision published last summer, Mr. Lamarre was cleared of that misconduct allegation but found guilty on seven others.
On one alleged transgression, the disciplinary council concluded that SNC-Lavalin under Mr. Lamarre’s leadership directly or indirectly made payments amounting to about $2-million to Moammar Gadhafi’s family, notably for expenses incurred by Saadi Gadhafi while he stayed in Canada.
SNC-Lavalin and two of its affiliates were charged in 2015 with fraud and violating Canada’s Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act for their business dealings in Libya. The company asked for a special settlement to the case, known as a deferred prosecution agreement, but was denied.
Four years later, SNC-Lavalin struck an agreement with prosecutors in which the company’s construction division pleaded guilty to a single charge of fraud while the corruption charge was dropped. It agreed to pay a $280-million fine and received a three-year probation order.
Riadh Ben Aissa was SNC-Lavalin’s former point man in Libya and stoked a relationship with Saadi Gadhafi, paying him kickbacks worth at least $47.7-million in exchange for helping the company win projects in Libya, according to an agreed statement of facts in the 2019 settlement.
Mr. Ben Aissa also set up two shell companies used to take a slice of SNC-Lavalin funds for himself and for his immediate supervisor at the time, Sami Bebawi, the statement said.
Mr. Ben Aissa pleaded guilty in Switzerland in 2014 to charges including corruption of a foreign public official and served time in a Swiss prison.
A jury in Canada convicted Mr. Bebawi in 2020 on charges including bribery and fraud for his role in the affair. He has since been granted full parole and is fighting a court order to pay a $24-million fine that was part of his sentence.
Mr. Bebawi insists he acted with the knowledge and authorization of his superiors. In a letter to the judge presiding over his trial, he deplored that senior leaders he called “untouchables” left the engineering company without ever suffering the same consequences he had.
In past exchanges with the media, Mr. Lamarre has stated that Mr. Bebawi and Mr. Ben Aissa are not credible because part of the consultant fees SNC-Lavalin paid in North Africa ended up in their bank accounts. The former CEO has told The Globe and Mail that he has always been accessible and “perfectly transparent” about the case.
Mr. Lamarre gave statements to authorities in Switzerland about the Libyan affairs, but those statements were never made public in Canada and he was never charged. In a book on the SNC-Lavalin saga, author and journalist Vincent Larouche said Canadian prosecutors concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to move forward.
As for the political financing activities, in 2016 SNC-Lavalin acknowledged that it had, for years when Mr. Lamarre was in charge, participated in a scheme whereby the company’s employees were encouraged to donate to federal political parties and then get reimbursed via bogus personal-expense claims, bonuses or benefits. Under Canadian law, businesses cannot make financial contributions to political parties or candidates.
The company subsequently entered into a compliance agreement with the Commissioner of Canada Elections. It also admitted to an inquiry in Quebec that it had used the same strategy for donations to the province’s political parties.