45 Facts About Karlheinz Schreiber

Karlheinz Schreiber was born on 25 March 1934 and is a German and Canadian citizen, an industrialist, lobbyist, fundraiser, arms dealer, businessman, and convicted criminal.

Karlheinz Schreiber has been in the news regarding his alleged role in the 1999 CDU contributions scandal in Germany, which damaged the political legacy of former Chancellor of Germany Helmut Kohl and involves the former Federal Minister of Finance of Germany Wolfgang Schauble as well as the Airbus affair in Canada, which was linked through allegation to former prime minister of Canada Brian Mulroney.

Karlheinz Schreiber was extradited to Germany on 2 August 2009, and convicted of tax evasion.

Karlheinz Schreiber's family was working class and belonged to an evangelical Lutheran community.

Karlheinz Schreiber's mother was a cook and his father worked in upholstery.

Karlheinz Schreiber was a fund raiser for the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union in West Germany before and during Helmut Kohl's chancellorship.

In 1991, Karlheinz Schreiber donated DM 1 million to the CDU, the party of the then Chancellor of Germany Helmut Kohl.

Karlheinz Schreiber set up trust accounts in Alberta for wealthy Germans in the early 1980s; among the people he served was Franz Josef Strauss, who had been premier of Bavaria.

The National Post reported on 11 December 2007, that in 1979 Alberta premier Peter Lougheed had rejected any business contact with Karlheinz Schreiber, according to Lee Richardson, who was then an aide to Lougheed and later a federal Member of Parliament from 2004 until 2012.

Karlheinz Schreiber obtained his Canadian citizenship in 1982 while retaining his German citizenship.

Karlheinz Schreiber was based in Calgary during his early years in Canada, but moved his main liaison activities to Montreal in the early 1980s.

Karlheinz Schreiber was a key figure in Canada's Airbus affair, in which he allegedly arranged secret commissions to be paid to Brian Mulroney and lobbyist Frank Moores in exchange for then Crown corporation Air Canada's purchase of Airbus jets.

Karlheinz Schreiber allegedly made payments of $300,000 in cash, in three instalments, to Brian Mulroney beginning one month after Mulroney had stepped down as Prime Minister but while Mulroney was still a sitting member of Parliament.

Karlheinz Schreiber had previously been a fundraiser in Mulroney's successful campaign to win the 1983 Progressive Conservative leadership convention.

Karlheinz Schreiber remained in Canada exhausting his appeals, until he was finally extradited to Germany on 2 August 2009.

Karlheinz Schreiber alleged that he had made payments to Mulroney in 1993 and 1994 totalling $300,000 in cash in equal instalments of $100,000; that Mulroney had agreed to aid in the building of a factory to make light armoured vehicles in Quebec; and that Mulroney never held up his end of the bargain.

In October 2007, Karlheinz Schreiber had apparently exhausted all avenues of legal appeal regarding his extradition to Germany and was set to be extradited to face charges.

Karlheinz Schreiber claimed that he had written a letter to current Prime Minister Stephen Harper on his extradition situation, and that he had asked Mulroney to intercede with Harper on this matter when Mulroney met with Harper in 2006.

However, Karlheinz Schreiber has vowed that he would not cooperate with the public inquiry if he was extradited.

On 23 November 2007, The Globe and Mail reported that the Commons Ethics Committee wanted to summon Karlheinz Schreiber to testify before it on 27 and 29 November.

Karlheinz Schreiber stated that if he testified, he wanted bail, to wear a business suit and not his prison jumpsuit, and would like time to study his files which were stored at his house in Ottawa.

On 28 November 2007, Karlheinz Schreiber was transported from Toronto to Ottawa, where he spent the night in the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre.

Karlheinz Schreiber had hired Elmer MacKay's son Peter MacKay to work for him at Thyssen AG in Germany in 1992; the plan was to train Peter MacKay as the head of the prospective Thyssen plant to manufacture light armoured vehicles, which had gained initial government approval, but was never built.

Karlheinz Schreiber remained under confinement at the Ottawa Detention Centre, with limited access to his files stored in his Ottawa home; his lawyer Edward Greenspan claimed this situation made it difficult for Karlheinz Schreiber to prepare properly for his appearances before the Ethics Committee, explaining his partial answers to questions from MPs.

On 4 December 2007, represented by lawyer Richard Auger, Karlheinz Schreiber was granted bail when he posted $1.3 million.

Karlheinz Schreiber was allowed to live in his Ottawa home while testifying before the Commons Ethics Committee.

Karlheinz Schreiber provided several files of his correspondence with Mulroney and Harper, for the Committee members to study, so that they could better prepare future questions.

Karlheinz Schreiber stated that he had donated $30,000 in cash to the unsuccessful 1993 PC leadership campaign of Jean Charest through his brother Robert Charest; this was legal at that time.

Karlheinz Schreiber received an apology from the Committee for the degrading treatment he had suffered, when his pants fell down while he was being escorted from the Commons, which had been filmed and shown on television around the world.

Karlheinz Schreiber stated that the $300,000, paid in three cash payments to Mulroney in 1993 and 1994, came from a Swiss Bank account, where he had deposited the 'success fees' which Schreiber had earned in commissions for his work as a lobbyist, from successful contracts with Airbus, MBB, and Thyssen in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Karlheinz Schreiber claimed that Fred Doucet, who had served as Chief of Staff while Mulroney was Opposition Leader from 1983 to 1984, and who continued to serve on Mulroney's staff in the Prime Minister's Office after that had in the early 1990s asked Karlheinz Schreiber to send money from the sale of Airbus planes to Mulroney's lawyer in Geneva.

Karlheinz Schreiber appeared again before the inquiry with new lawyer Marc Lalonde in November 2008.

Botting immediately flew from Ottawa to Toronto and with Greenspan was able to arrange an emergency hearing before an Ontario Superior Court judge in Toronto, to pursue yet another legal loophole: Karlheinz Schreiber was required to report to the Toronto Detention Centre within 48 hours, and as long as he did so, the RCMP did not have a court order to take Karlheinz Schreiber anywhere else.

In those circumstances, the prison warden had the final say over whether Karlheinz Schreiber should be released to the custody of the RCMP.

Less than three hours after the court denied him an adjournment so that the Court of Appeal could hear further argument, Karlheinz Schreiber was declared "surrendered to Germany," and the decade-long saga came to an end.

Karlheinz Schreiber stated that significant funds from West German sources financed the 1983 Winnipeg ouster of Joe Clark as Progressive Conservative leader; Clark had called for a leadership convention, which led five months later to Brian Mulroney winning.

Karlheinz Schreiber said he contributed $25,000 himself, and that the late Franz Josef Strauss, Airbus chairman and former Bavarian premier, added a similar amount.

Karlheinz Schreiber told Mansbridge that Franz Josef Strauss had a policy of helping to elect conservative-leaning governments around the world, by financing their campaigns, and that the Canadian case was just one example.

Karlheinz Schreiber told Mansbridge that Mulroney knew that the $300,000 in cash that he received from Karlheinz Schreiber from 1993 to 1994 was coming from the Thyssen account, and that the arrangement called for Mulroney to lobby on behalf of Thyssen to develop the Bear Head project, once he stepped down from office as prime minister in June 1993.

Karlheinz Schreiber said he had met with Mulroney and cabinet minister Elmer MacKay at the prime minister's residence, 24 Sussex Drive, in March 1993, to discuss the Bear Head project.

Karlheinz Schreiber said that no receipt or invoice was issued at the time for the C$300,000 deal with Mulroney.

Karlheinz Schreiber enlisted the aid of extradition law expert Gary Botting, who was preparing to challenge the validity of the Canada-Germany bilateral extradition treaty in the Federal Court on the basis that it had never been ratified by Parliament.

However, the judge refused the application, and Karlheinz Schreiber was placed on a plane bound for Germany that afternoon.

On retrial in 2013, Karlheinz Schreiber was sentenced to six and a half years in prison, but the sentence is being served through house arrest on health grounds.

Karlheinz Schreiber is prominent in Cameron's On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years.