REGINA – Lorne McLaren, the Saskatchewan MLA who pleaded guilty to defrauding the province’s taxpayers of $837,000, has been sentenced to 31Ú2 years in jail.
And the Progressive Conservative Party of Sask-atchewan, which received $125,000 of illegally diverted caucus funds in 1987 through McLaren, will pay the money back, leader Bill Boyd said recently.
Court of Queen’s Bench judge Isadore Grotsky said McLaren’s prison sentence was necessary because of the seriousness of the offences and the damage they have done to the public perception of government.
“You, by your criminal misconduct, have brought our cherished legislative process into disrepute,” he said while sentencing McLaren. “If those who make the law will not respect it, who will?”
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McLaren helped set up numbered companies through which government money was illegally taken out of PC caucus funds.
Grotsky called the companies “cash cows through whom you contrived to illegally and fraudulently plunder the Saskatchewan prov-incial treasury and through it the people of Sask-atchewan.”
Grotsky did not order McLaren to repay the stolen money. Grotsky said the former MLA was financially broke and could never repay the money, so there was no point ordering him to do so.
McLaren served as Tory caucus chair for many years.
Present Tory leader Boyd said the PC party will repay the $125,000.
“We believe that the party has a moral obligation to restore public faith of the caucus,” he said.
But he said turning over the cash was not an acknowledgement of any criminal culpability.
“As leader of the PC party, I believe we are obligated both morally and ethically, although maybe not legally,” he said. The party might have to take out a bank loan to raise the money, Boyd said
