SNC Lavalin’s Image Gets Worse

SNC-Lavalin, AltaLink’s parent company, continues to dominate the news over its questionable operations and affiliations around the world.

The Ottawa Citizen reports that an SNC-Lavalin employee supported Syrian strongman Bashar Assad. This adds to SNC-Lavalin’s skeletons in the closet, including its close ties to the repressive and tyrannous Moammar Gadhafi family. And, the firm is also being questioned about its involvement with the deposed Ben Ali regime in Tunisia.

As a result, the Montreal-based company’s stock continues to free fall, falling another 2.7% yesterday. Investor confidence in SNC-Lavalin has obviously been shaken recently, even though many of the company’s questionable operations and associations have been known for some time.

Financial backlashes over these ties will continue to plague the company. For example, the Globe and Mail reports that SNC-Lavalin’s participation in a Chicago-area airport proposal worth $300 million is in jeopardy because local politicians don’t want to be associated with a company that has a friendly relationship with the Gadhafi family. A local county executive, Lawrence Walsh, is quoted as saying, “I just thought, holy smokes – to be doing all that with a country that has been an enemy of the United States of America?” Many other county officials are also bitterly opposed to SNC-Lavalin’s involvement in the airport project. Another county board member, Cory Singer, said the allegations show “that this company has ties to the terrorist wing of the Libyan government…this is absolutely not what we need in our community.”

SNC-Lavalin will be building AltaLink’s Heartland Transmission Project and Western Alberta Transmission Line, as well as overseeing contract management for both of these projects. The company has been building and overseeing above-ground transmission projects for AltaLink for many years.

For more on SNC-Lavalin, AltaLink and questionable ties, see this link.

~ by RETA on March 1, 2012.