MONTREAL, Feb. 27 (UPI) -- A Canadian construction firm put a daughter-in-law of Moammar Gadhafi on the payroll in violation of U.N. sanctions, a former company executive alleges.
The charges were made by Riadh Ben Aissa, a former executive vice president of SNC-Lavalin, who has been jailed in Switzerland on charges of corruption and money laundering, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported Thursday.
In documents filed in a Montreal court, Ben Aissa says SNC-Lavalin had a long history of doing favors for the Gadhafi family. One of those favors involved putting the wife of Gadhafi's son Saadi on the company payroll to help the family financially as the regime was falling.
Ben Aissa claims Pierre Duhaime, who was then the company's chief executive, "was aware of this."
Duhaime, who was forced to resign in 2012, has been charged with bribery in connection with a Montreal hospital project.
SNC-Lavalin has called Ben Aissa, who also was forced to resign in 2012, a rogue executive who supported the Gadhafi regime without company knowledge, the CBC reported.
The company has acknowledged it was aware of economic sanctions against Libya instituted by the United Nations in 2011. SNC-Lavalin received billions of dollars in contracts from the Libyan government during the 2000s.
