Ah yes, our honest and hard working and sole supplier of ART cars (SkyTrain) and ALRT/ART parts, Bombardier is back in the news.
One wonders why Metro Vancouver and TransLink keeps planning building with the obsolete proprietary ART mini-metro system, complete with steam roller planning and mock (possibly illegal) bidding?
One wonders why real public debate has never been allowed over the controversial proprietary ART system, by the province, metro Vancouver, and TransLink?
Premier Horgan, can you change the “SkyTrain” culture at TransLink?
Put another way, is your NDP government strong enough to change Metro Vancouver’s SkyTrain culture?
Maybe severing ties with Bombardier and ART would make a good start.
An aggravated bribery trial involving a Bombardier Inc. employee that began on Tuesday is not just about 37-year-old Evgeny Pavlov, but about the culture and behaviour of the company he worked for, Sweden’s top anti-corruption prosecutor says.
Mr. Pavlov pleaded innocent as the prosecution rolled out a case that alleges collusion with officials in Azerbaijan, and side payments to a mysterious company controlled by associates of former Russian Railways boss Vladimir Yakunin.
Mr. Pavlov’s lawyer, Peter Lindqvist, said his client “claims no responsibility” in the case, and asked why Sweden’s National Anti-Corruption Unit had not named Mr. Pavlov’s alleged co-conspirators in the alleged bribery scheme.
“Because there are so many of them,” replied Thomas Forsberg, the senior prosecutor at Sweden’s National Anti-Corruption Unit.
Although only Mr. Pavlov has been charged, the prosecution has named six employees of Bombardier Transportation Sweden as suspects, including Mr. Pavlov and his boss Peter Cedervall, the president of the company’s Stockholm-based Rail Control Solutions division.
Mr. Forsberg said Mr. Pavlov ai??i?? who faces up to six years in jail if found guilty ai??i?? had “offered and promised, and also given, bribes to an official of the Azerbaijan Railways authority” while helping a Bombardier-led consortium win a 2013 contract to install rail-signalling systems in the former Soviet Republic. Mr. Pavlov was head of business development at Bombardier’s Moscow office when the contract was signed. He later moved to Stockholm and the company’s Rail Control Solutions unit as head of sales for Region North.
The Azerbaijan contract was worth $340-million (U.S), 85 per cent of which was provided by the World Bank, which is conducting an audit into the awarding of the Azerbaijan deal.
That could lead to wider problems for one of Canada’s flagship companies.
If Bombardier is found to have won the contract via collusion or corruption, it would be banned from competing for future projects funded by the World Bank, which subsidizes much of the infrastructure construction in the developing world. On Friday, Bombardier rejected the National Anti-Corruption Unit’s allegations in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail.
“Bombardier denies any allegations that it acted improperly,” company spokesman Simon Letendre wrote. “We take these allegations very seriously as they assert conduct that does not reflect our values or the high standards we set for ourselves. We are carefully reviewing the legal filings and support a complete accounting of all the facts and circumstances surrounding this project. As the legal proceedings are ongoing, we cannot and will not comment any further at this stage.”………………….
