Top Canada court rules World Bank does not have to hand over Bangladesh’s Padma Bridge files

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that the World Bank does not need to turn over documents sought in a case against former employees of SNC-Lavalin Group Inc accused of bribery.

The four accused had been charged with bribing foreign public officials in relation to the SNC's bid for a construction supervision contract for the Padma Bridge in Bangladesh, which the World Bank promised to fund.
 
The global lender stepped out of the project and Bangladesh is now building the bridge with its own funds.
 
The apex court of Canada on Friday overturned a lower court order that in 2014 said the World Bank should release its investigative files for judicial review that could be relevant to the defence.
 
The World Bank appealed against that ruling, arguing it had immunity from such requests.

In its unanimous decision, the Supreme Court agreed, ruling that the trial judge "erred in construing so narrowly an immunity that is integral to the independent functioning of an international organization."
 
The World Bank barred SNC from taking part in the World Bank-funded projects for 10 years after conducting an investigation into corruption allegations concerning the engineering firm, and shared some information with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
 
The RCMP did its own probe and three former SNC executives and one other man were charged.

Investigation in Canada

The World Bank moved the Canadian Supreme Court in July last year after Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice ordered it to provide -- by submitting the documents of its own investigation -- evidence of its allegation of a ‘corruption conspiracy’ in the project.

After charges of corruption in the Padma Bridge project were levelled, the Bangladesh government, too, wanted relevant evidence from the World Bank, but the latter did not pay any heed to the requests.

The World Bank alleged corruption in the project and began investigations in 2010.

It requested the RCMP to take the necessary action based on the evidence they gathered during their own investigations and received from the ‘informants’.

Later, the RCMP gave permission to record telephone conversations of a few officials of Canadian construction firm SNC-Lavalin. It also searched the office of the firm.

Initially, Mohammad Ismail and Ramesh Shah and then Kevin Wallace and Julfikar Bhuiyan were charged in the case.

At one point, Bhuiyan’s lawyer demanded that the World Bank submit all the findings of its investigation to the court.

But the Washington-based lender refused to take part in the court hearing, saying it enjoyed impunity as an international organisation and was not obliged to submit any document to any court.

But Ontario’s Superior Court said in its order that the World Bank itself had violated the impunity by directly taking part in the RCMP’s investigation process.

At the beginning of the case, the RCMP submitted before the court the documents they collected during their investigations.

The documents, however, could not be published in the media as a ‘bar’ was imposed on their publication following the defendants’ plea.

Bangladesh found no proof

The World Bank suspended its $1.2 billion credit raising suspicion of graft allegations but the Bangladesh government denied the charges outright.

After much ado, the Sheikh Hasina government in January 2013 withdrew its funding request and decided to bridge the Padma with domestic funds.

However, it ordered the Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate the allegations.

The ACC prosecuted seven people, including the erstwhile Bridges Division secretary Md Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan in December 2012.

Bhuiyan was arrested and suspended from his job. But in June 2014, his suspension order was withdrawn and he was reinstated.

Former communications minister Syed Abul Hossain, who resigned after the allegations were raised, was not named in the case. Neither was former state minister for foreign affairs Abul Hasan Chowdhury.

A Dhaka court acquitted all seven accused in October 2014 after the ACC found no corruption in the project.

The ACC recently said the case was filed under the World Bank pressure and without documentary evidence.

The Padma Bridge, Bangladesh's largest infrastructure project to date, will connect 21 southern districts with capital Dhaka.

Once commissioned, it is expected to boost Bangladesh's growth by as much as 1.2 percent.