Board of Director members who resigned from the scandal-plagued Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation claim the Chinese Communist Party-backed donation wasn’t actually returned. 

On Tuesday, only weeks after the Foundation said it returned a Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-backed donation, the entire Board of Directors, President, and CEO resigned.

Subsequently, La Presse reports that five of the eight Board members spoke to the outlet anonymously.

“Until recently, my understanding was that the donation had been repaid. But the latest news is that it hasn’t,” one member said.

Documents reveal that the name of the CCP-linked donor wasn’t recorded on the Foundation’s books. Consequently, the Foundation was unwilling to name the individual on a cheque because doing so would be illegal. 

Board members who were not part of the Foundation at the time of the CCP-linked donation asked for an investigation into the matter, but this created another problem. 

“Anyone who was on the finance committee or the audit committee at the time of the donation has a conflict of interest because they accepted these cheques,” another anonymous Board member told La Presse.

“They should not, therefore, be part of an investigation into it. They should have recused themselves. And they refused.”

Another anonymous Board member called the donation a “stink bomb.” 

Yet another anonymous member said the refusal of certain members to recuse themselves from an investigation compromised the entire Foundation. 

“There are people at the Foundation who have been there for too long, and have become far too involved. An independent investigation would have determined who the donor was, if there were any conditions attached to these sums, and the relationships behind it.”

Last month, Prime Minister Trudeau said that he wasn’t involved with his family’s charity ever since he was elected in 2015, suggesting he had no idea that CCP advisor Zhang Bin donated to the Trudeau Foundation in 2016.

Trudeau met Zhang in 2016 at a cash-for-access Liberal Party fundraiser hosted by the Chinese Business Chamber of Canada chair Benson Wong. Trudeau was the guest of honour at the event. 

Zhang donated $1 million to “honour the memory and leadership” of Trudeau’s father and former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, as reported in the Globe and Mail. 

Zhang’s donation consisted of $200,000 to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, $750,000 to the University of Montreal’s faculty of law (where Pierre Trudeau graduated from and worked), as well as $50,000 towards a statue of Pierre Trudeau.

Donations to the Trudeau Foundation increased ten fold between 2014 and 2016, the two years between Trudeau first getting elected Prime Minister.

The Counter Signal requested comment from The Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation but did not receive a response before publication.