The Trudeau Foundation is going to court to ensure that the controversial gift of a Chinese billionaire is deemed to have “never existed”.
In a motion sent to the Superior Court last week, a copy of which we obtained, the foundation that bears the name of the father of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau indicates that it has a “real interest” in has “no longer any doubt” about the disputed donation of $ 140,000 that she repaid last April.
She therefore asks the Court to declare that the donation of $140,000, offered in two installments of $70,000 in 2016 and 2017, is officially “resolved, null and void and deemed never to have existed”. The Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation even wants to be able to update its records to this effect if it gets the green light from the courts.
Controversial donation
The donations of two wealthy Chinese businessmen to the University of Montreal and the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation in 2016 have caused much ink to flow in recent months.
These donations would have been guided by the Chinese government, according to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, reported The Globe and Mail in February.
In April, the Trudeau Foundation announced that it had repaid the two $70,000 donations to the “Millennium Golden Eagle” corporation, headed by Bin Zhang, a businessman known to be close to the government. Chinese.
The crisis had led this spring to the resignation of several directors of the foundation as well as its president and chief executive officer.
For its part, the University of Montreal (UdeM) had received $550,000 out of a promised sum of $800,000 in 2016. On April 19, the institution announced that it had decided to keep the donation, contrary to the Trudeau Foundation.
Last month, we wrote in our pages that UdeM wanted to roll out the red carpet for the two wealthy Chinese businessmen, as it hoped for other donations to come, according to emails obtained by an access request. information.
