Agent for former Conservative MP Wajid Khan pleads guilty under Elections Act

OTTAWA – The official agent for former Conservative MP Wajid Khan has been fined $400 by an Ontario Provincial Court after failing to provide full documentation for Khan’s 2008 election expenses.

Paul Gallardo pleaded guilty under the Canada Elections Act and the court ordered him to provide all outstanding information to the elections watchdog within six months.

Gallardo was charged last September, almost four years after the 2008 election campaign in which Khan lost his seat to a Liberal challenger.

It was the second brush with Elections Canada for the Mississauga, Ont., politician, who crossed the floor to Stephen Harper’s Conservative government after being elected as a Liberal in 2006.

Khan was charged in 2007 with exceeding his campaign spending limit by $30,000 in the 2004 election.

Elections Canada has also written to the Speaker of the House of Commons requesting that two Conservative MPs — James Bezan and Shelley Glover — be suspended because they too have failed to provide expense documents from the 2011 election, a matter the Manitoba MPs are challenging in court.