An Ottawa businessman found guilty of plotting to bribe prominent Indian officials in a bid-rigging scheme to secure an airline security contract should be sentenced to four years in prison, a federal prosecutor argued Wednesday.
Nazir Karigar was the brains behind the sophisticated plan to pay officials that included an Indian cabinet minister $450,000 to ensure security company CryptoMetrics was awarded a contract to sell Air India facial recognition software, prosecutor Moray Welch argued.
The Indian-born Karigar is also the first person convicted under Canada’s foreign anticorruption law. Previously only corporations had ever been found guilty of the offence.
“Mr. Karigar was at the forefront,” argued Welch, telling others “what they had to do and how to do it.”
“Without him, none of it would have happened at all,” said Welch, adding it involved a sophisticated level of planning.
“This is the inverse of an impulse crime or momentary lack of judgment,” Welch added. “This is not a bunch of guys who just happen upon this opportunity and, like the Three Stooges, they made a big cock-up of it.”
02/04/14 Andrew Seymour/Ottawa Citizen
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Nazir Karigar was the brains behind the sophisticated plan to pay officials that included an Indian cabinet minister $450,000 to ensure security company CryptoMetrics was awarded a contract to sell Air India facial recognition software, prosecutor Moray Welch argued.
The Indian-born Karigar is also the first person convicted under Canada’s foreign anticorruption law. Previously only corporations had ever been found guilty of the offence.
“Mr. Karigar was at the forefront,” argued Welch, telling others “what they had to do and how to do it.”
“Without him, none of it would have happened at all,” said Welch, adding it involved a sophisticated level of planning.
“This is the inverse of an impulse crime or momentary lack of judgment,” Welch added. “This is not a bunch of guys who just happen upon this opportunity and, like the Three Stooges, they made a big cock-up of it.”
02/04/14 Andrew Seymour/Ottawa Citizen
