Canada

A former Nova Scotia cabinet minister says he didn't personally benefit from expense claims and is denying allegations made at his fraud trial that he gave a constituency worker a bonus if she agreed to buy his car.

Russell MacKinnon told his trial Thursday that he gave Nicole Campbell more money because she was underpaid for her secretarial duties at his Sydney River constituency office from January 2005 to June 2006.

"What I was doing was topping her up because she was earning considerably less than assistants on the mainland," MacKinnon told the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia in Halifax.

MacKinnon, 59, said he wanted to top up Campbell's salary because she was only making $12 an hour and was under "considerable financial stress" at the time. Constituency assistants elsewhere in the province, he said, were making between $20 and $25 an hour.

In her testimony earlier this week, Campbell said she was offered a $3,000 bonus in October 2005 to buy MacKinnon's mid-1990s Dodge Intrepid.

MacKinnon said Campbell was having troubles with her vehicle at the time and she approached him about the possibility of buying his car.

"My understanding was that she wanted me to put her top-ups in her constituency account until such time as she decided to buy the vehicle."

MacKinnon said the increases to Campbell's salary were reflected in receipts filed with the Speaker's Office in the fall of 2005.

He also denied Campbell's testimony that he had her sign blank expense receipts before they were submitted.

"No, never," he said.

Cheques were later issued to pay Campbell, including $2,000 in cash left in an envelope at the constituency office, MacKinnon said.

But in 2010, the $2,000 in cash was returned to him in a box of documents by a man who had bought a cottage from MacKinnon, the court heard. MacKinnon said some of his papers from his constituency office were stored at the cottage after he left politics in 2006.