SNC-Lavalin has found itself in a bit of surprising hot water recently.  ‎The company is a large construction and engineering firm with global operations, ‎but based in Canada.  Like many global companies they operate in jurisdictions ‎where “local practices” can be quite different from the straight-forward ‎commercial arrangements we take for granted in the West.

Recently two executives have left the firm, and a contractor they hired is in jail ‎in Mexico, under a cloud of suspicion that she was helping the son of former ‎Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi escape in the wake of that country’s ‎revolution.  It was not clear if this was the extent of the issue, or exactly what ‎happened here, but this does seem to have been a trigger to launch an ‎investigation.

The Board did investigate (through a special committee) and developed a report ‎on the situation.  What they found was a set of payments for $56M that the CFO ‎refused to authorize, that the CEO then authorized.  Where these payments ‎went and what they were for is unreleased (we’re all wondering), but they say ‎they were “likely unrelated” to the Libya situation.  It seems a likely bet that ‎these payments were at least dubious under federal legislation (see the CFPOA ‎‎– Preventing Corrupt Foreign Public Officials Act). They say they are ‎‎“cooperating with authorities.”

SNC-Lavalin has acted with dispatch, and a clear process to clean up a mess that ‎could easily have been dragged out as an agenda re-defining item. SNC-Lavalin ‎will no doubt focus on construction and engineering, and a little less on other ‎countries complex domestic political situations – even though they can ‎sometimes be hard to ignore if you’re working in that country.