It had been years since Aleem Lakhani had seen his cousin when they sat down in Toronto in early 2008.
Nazim Gillani, whom he used to babysit, was full of zip, business plans and eager for introductions. The only name Mr. Lakhani eventually offered would lead to a political scandal and the downfall of a cabinet minister.
For the past two weeks, one question has loomed large over the affair that resulted in Helena Guergis's resignation and a police investigation into her husband Rahim Jaffer: How did a former Member of Parliament come to align himself with Mr. Gillani, an accused fraudster who fled Vancouver with several outstanding lawsuits launched by angry investors and creditors?
Friday, the man who connected Mr. Gillani with Mr. Jaffer agreed to speak publicly for the first time to explain why he believes his fast-talking cousin's boastfulness is really to blame for the Guergis-Jaffer affair.
"It was an innocent act and this... has happened. It's terrible," said Mr. Lakhani, a 47-year-old businessman with a PhD from McGill University in political science.
Mr. Lakhani has known Mr. Jaffer for about a dozen years, and was introduced to the politician when he was still a fresh-faced, 25-year-old Reform MP. When they met in 1997, Mr. Jaffer was the first Muslim elected to the House of Commons, and Mr. Lakhani was the co-author of a widely cited academic article on diversity in federal politics. Both men are Ismaili Muslims, a 15-million-member sect of Islam whose spiritual leader is the Aga Khan.
"I studied minority politics and government, and I was pleased to meet another young ethnic minority that was new on the Hill. That was about it," said Mr. Lakhani, whose academic training in data analysis led to a job in the warranty business.
Over Mr. Jaffer's career, the two men occasionally met for coffee or lunch, Mr. Lakhani said. Last summer, about a year after Mr. Jaffer lost his seat in the 2008 election, the former politician told Mr. Lakhani that he was embarking on a new career securing funding for companies that produced environmentally friendly technologies.
Mr. Lakhani's cousin, meanwhile, had lined himself up with a company, Wright Tech, that was seeking financing for a product that turned waste into fuel. It seemed like a perfect match for Mr. Jaffer's new venture, Mr. Lakhani said.
So when Mr. Lakhani arranged for the two to meet, along with officials from Wright Tech, at a steakhouse in Toronto's west end on Aug. 25, 2009, Mr. Lakhani says he had no idea that his cousin was trumpeting the introduction behind the scenes.
In an e-mail that Mr. Gillani wrote that day to potential investors, he called Mr. Jaffer the "Canadian government money access point" and he described his cousin, who also came to the steakhouse meeting, as part of a something called "the Garfunkel Group." Mr. Lakhani said Friday that the "Garfunkel Group" doesn't exist, and his cousin must have made it up.
"I don't know what it is that motivated him," he said. "That's the kind of falsities in which he operated in to do his business. ... I'm a victim too."
Mr. Lakhani said he was inattentive at the meeting, but said he did recall discussion about possible government grants for Wright Tech. He said he has no recollection of the name Helena Guergis, Mr. Jaffer's wife, arising at the meeting. Fifteen days after the steakhouse lunch, Ms. Guergis sent a letter to her cousin Tony Guergis, then a municipal politician north of Toronto, promoting Wright Tech's product.
Mr. Lakhani said he never pried about why his cousin left Vancouver in 2008. "If I understood right, it was that he lost a lot of money... and he had to rebuild himself," he said. When he met Mr. Gillani's business partner, former Toronto Argonauts football player Mike Mihelic, he was told the offensive lineman did paperwork for Mr. Gillani.
After the meeting, Mr. Lakhani said, he flew back to his home in Ottawa. It wasn't until the media reported that Mr. Jaffer had been arrested for drunk driving and cocaine possession in mid-September that Mr. Lakhani phoned his cousin and discovered that another Toronto steakhouse meeting between his cousin and friend had preceded the arrest.
Mr. Lakhani said he has never seen or heard about Mr. Jaffer using cocaine. He said that, although he feels awful about the consequences of his introduction of Mr. Jaffer to Mr. Gillani, he doesn't feel responsible for what has unfolded.
"If I could turn back the clock of time, and put back things, and these individuals had not met or pursued any interests or landed where these gentlemen have landed - absolutely," he said. "I ... wished that was the case."
Mr. Lakhani isn't the first person close to Mr. Gillani who felt the financier exploited a personal connection for monetary gain. Robert Rusbourne, a home designer in British Columbia, knew Mr. Gillani when he was playing cricket in Vancouver in the mid-1990s.
In 1998 Mr. Gillani contacted him with an investment opportunity, an offer so sure to triple or quadruple in value he presented it with a written guarantee that his investment would not be lost.
"Basically, the way he presented it to me was 'You know Bob, you were like a dad to me. In cricket you were virtually like a dad to me with the coaching...I would really like to help you,'" Mr. Rusbourne recalled.
Mr. Rusbourne said he lost $20,000 in the deal and tried to sue, but was unable to serve Mr. Gillani with legal papers. In the end his lawyer advised him to give up.
"It may not be worth the consequences," Mr. Rusbourne recalled his lawyer telling him.