"A hunting accident in my living room"

So the former VP of Groupaction becomes the second person connected with the sponsorship scandal to testify, under oath, to having been afraid someone would kill him -- a fact CP neglects to mention until the eighth graf...

MONTREAL (CP) - A former ad executive lived with a twisted trail of fake projects and phoney contracts because "great Canadian institutions" like the Prime Minister's Office of Jean Chretien were involved, Chuck Guité's fraud trial heard Wednesday.

Jean Lambert, a former vice-president of Groupaction Marketing Inc., testified the schemes grew more complicated through the 1990s and involved high-level civil servants, MPs, senior Quebec Liberals, cabinet ministers and senators.

"At the centre of all these tentacles was the PMO," Lambert testified.

But Lambert also said he did not go to police because he didn't have concrete proof of his suspicions.

Guité's name scarcely came up in three hours of testimony as Lambert described "camaraderie well beyond what I would have thought as normal" between politicians and Groupaction executives.

"It was just an accumulation of what I was seeing going on in the agency where I worked, the closeness of my agency and others to the governing party, members of Parliament, ministers," Lambert said, without naming many names.

"It became evident, without having proof, that something was going on."

The dawning realization of high-powered involvement over a number of years caused Lambert to fear for his life, he said, and scared him away from complaining to police.

Lambert said he feared that if he were wrong in his allegations, he would probably end up in a mental institution for spreading conspiracy theories.

"I was a speck of dust in this," he said. "If I was right, well, the idea of having a hunting accident in my living room didn't interest me, either."