Staff report
A one-time advisor to Canada’s prime minister is under scrutiny for his ties to a former Salisbury resident who pleaded guilty in 2004 to laundering money from a prostitution ring she helped run
The Globe and Mail of Toronto reported that Bruce Carson, a former senior advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has been linked to two former prostitutes. One of them is Barbara Lynn Khan.
Khan, who also went by the name “Essa,” and her husband Saleemudeen Khan operated the prostitution ring out of a home on South Main Street, federal authorities said when the Khans were indicted in 2004.
Along with others in North Carolina and Florida, they set up meetings between prostitutes and clients in hotel rooms and elsewhere across North Carolina. They advertised their business pornographic magazines in several states under names including Sugar Shack and Intimate Encounters. The customers paid up to $3,000 per night, federal indictments said.
The couple and their associates started the business around 2000, authorities said. They were convicted of prostitution-related offenses in 2003. By the time federal indictments were issued in 2004, Saleemudeen Khan had fled to Canada. He was extradited back to the U.S. in 2005.
Facing numerous charges, Barbara Khan pleaded guilty in December 2004 to conspiring to launder proceeds from the operation. She received a one-year prison sentence and was deported to Canada upon her release.
According to the article in The Globe and Mail, Barbara Khan became involved with Carson in 2006, around the time Carson began advising the Canadian prime minister. It was unclear how they met, the newspaper reported.
Carson and Khan bought a condominium together in downtown Ottowa, the Canadian capital city, in 2009, eight months after he’d left the prime minister’s office, the newspaper reported.
The revelations about his Carson’s relationship with Khan surfaced, The Globe and Mail reported, after questions arose about Carson’s past — including five criminal convictions and financial troubles — and Harper, the prime minister, asked the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to investigate alleged improper lobbying by Carson.
Khan, who is now 43, was born Barbara Lynn Welter and raised north of Toronto, the newspaper reported.
In a phone interview with the Toronto newspaper, Khan said her relationship with Carson had been over for some time. A person the newspaper described as a person close to Khan said she and Carson had discussed marriage.