Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
OTTAWA — The word ‘confidential’ was splashed across the work mandate of the independent audit into Mike Duffy’s Senate expenses, and yet information still found its way into Stephen Harper’s office.
The senator’s fraud, breach of trust and bribery trial is hearing about how the PMO sought and obtained critical information on the firm Deloitte’s examination of Duffy’s expenses.
Defence lawyer Donald Bayne is spending hours on the Deloitte issue in an aggressive cross-examination of Harper’s former chief of staff, Nigel Wright.
Bayne has put to the court that Wright and others meddled in the Deloitte report, dispatching Sen. Irving Gerstein to get information from personal contacts he had at the audit firm.
Wright has repeatedly rejected that characterization, saying he only asked Gerstein to make sure Deloitte was connecting with the Senate committee that had commissioned the audit.
Gerstein, who was not on that committee himself, apparently transmitted information to the PMO about the Duffy audit that he had gleaned from his senior contact at Deloitte.
