Alexandre Trudeau prepares to appear before the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, studying foreign interference in Ottawa on May 3, 2023. A probe found he broke internal rules and policies of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation by accepting a $200,000 donation pledge, which he was not authorized to do.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
A special committee hired by the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation to investigate donations tied to two wealthy Chinese businessmen said it couldn’t rule out the possibility cash sent to the Montreal charity may have been part of an “influence scheme” targeting the Trudeau government.
The probe concluded the foundation’s handling of tax receipts related to the Chinese donations was “non-compliant” with the Income Tax Act, and that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s brother, Alexandre, had not been authorized by the foundation’s board to sign the $200,000 donation pledge for the organization.
The Canada Revenue Agency said in a statement late Wednesday that it had not sanctioned the Trudeau Foundation over the taxation issue.
“Since the CRA has neither imposed a sanction upon the charity referenced nor revoked its registered status as the result of an audit, the confidentiality provisions of the Act prevent the CRA from releasing any information regarding if or when they were last audited,” CRA spokesman Charles Drouin said.
In its findings, the special committee said it did not believe the motivation for the 2016 donation was intended to influence the foundation’s activities, but said it could have been targeting the recently elected Trudeau government.
“We could not exclude the possibility that the donations in question may have been part of a wider influence scheme,” said the Feb. 5 report posted on the Trudeau Foundation website. “It is important to emphasize the fact that this potential scheme, if any, would have intended to target the Canadian government rather than the foundation itself.”
Nevertheless, the report concluded: “We did not find any evidence that could suggest that the donations in question were linked to any interference scheme.”
The report added it found no evidence the two Chinese billionaires – Zhang Bin and Niu Gensheng – or the Prime Minister “were involved in any illegal activities in connection with the donation itself.”
The foundation, which offers scholarships, fellowships and leadership programs, commemorates former prime minister Pierre Trudeau. It operates with a $125-million endowment from the Canadian government provided in 2002 when former Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien was in power.
In February, 2023, The Globe reported, citing a national-security source, that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service had intercepted a 2014 conversation between Mr. Zhang and an unnamed commercial attaché at one of China’s consulates in Canada. They discussed the federal election that was expected to take place in 2015, and the possibility that the Liberals would defeat Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and form the next government.
The diplomat told Mr. Zhang that Beijing would reimburse him for the entire amount of the donation to the Trudeau Foundation, according to the source. The Globe has not named the source because they risk prosecution under the Security of Information Act. The special committee report said it found no evidence of this reimbursement.
In 2016, nine months after Justin Trudeau won a majority government, the Trudeau Foundation and the University of Montreal publicly identified Mr. Zhang and Mr. Niu as the donors behind a $1-million gift. The men pledged $200,000 to the foundation. They also pledged $750,000 to the law school where Pierre Trudeau studied and taught, and $50,000 for a statue of the former prime minister that was never built. The school and the foundation ultimately received most, but not all, of the promised amounts.
After The Globe’s report, the foundation returned $140,000 to the Chinese donors, who had delivered 70 per cent of the pledged money. The executive director and eight board members also resigned in April.
Foundation policy in 2016 required acceptances of gifts under $1-million to be signed by the organization’s president and chief executive, who at the time was Morris Rosenberg, a former senior civil servant. Gifts over $1-million needed to be signed by the board.
Instead, Alexandre Trudeau and a foundation board member at the time signed the agreement with the two Chinese businessmen.
“Alexandre Trudeau was not specifically allowed to sign the donation pledge unless authorized to do so,” the report said. “We did not identify any records or evidence that the Foundation’s board of directors authorized Mr. Alexandre Trudeau to do so. This being said, in our view, the donation pledge is valid.”
The special committee was composed of two lawyers who had no connection to the Trudeau foundation: Peter MacKinnon and Stuart H. (Kip) Cobbett. It retained the services of lawyers at Norton Rose Fulbright to help the probe.
The committee report said “a number of individuals, including a few key witnesses, declined or ignored our requests to meet” during its investigation.
Their report confirmed previous stories by The Globe that said the China Cultural Industry Association – a state-backed group in Beijing that aims to build “the soft power of Chinese culture” globally – contacted the Trudeau Foundation at the outset to dictate what name and address should be put on the tax receipt for the gift. The special committee’s report, however, could not find a receipt to reflect this request.
As The Globe reported in 2023, the association asked the Trudeau Foundation to refrain from using the names of Mr. Zhang and Mr. Niu. Instead, the officials asked the foundation to attribute the donation to the Canadian subsidiary of Millennium Golden Eagle International, a firm run by Mr. Zhang. They asked that the tax receipt be linked to an address in Hong Kong rather than the company’s Canadian address – which is a large house, with a pool and basketball court, in the Montreal suburb of Dorval.
The special committee report found a receipt for the second instalment of the donation from the Chinese businessmen was contrary to both internal foundation rules and the Income Tax Act because the money was not coming from the two men but from Millennium’s Canadian subsidiary.
“The donation receipt bears the correct address for Millennium Canada, but is addressed to Mr. Zhang and Mr. Niu in addition to Millennium Canada. The names of these two individuals should not have appeared as donors on the donation receipt since they were not the payors of said donation, the whole in accordance with the Income Tax Act” as well as with the foundation’s own internal policies, the report said.
A Globe reporter last year visited the address in Hong Kong, which now appears to be occupied by a different company. An employee who answered the door had never heard of Millennium Golden Eagle. The company does not appear to ever have been registered in Hong Kong.