Jacques Corriveau, a central figure in the sponsorship scandal, takes the stand at the Gomery inquiry Thursday.

Promoter Luc Lemay testified Wednesday he hired Corriveau -- a friend of former prime minister Jean Chretien's, who often visited 24 Sussex Drive -- to win sponsorship contracts for him.

The owner of Group Polygone paid Corriveau a commission of 17.5 per cent. The commissions eventually totalled $6.7 million. Lemay grossed $40 million.

Corriveau submitted bills for hunting and fishing shows around Quebec. They were held at the Olympic stadiums in communities like Rimouski, Chicoutimi, Sherbrooke and the Quebec City suburb St. Foy.

One problem: There were no Olympic stadiums in those communities.

However, Corriveau had legitimately booked space for Lemay at a hunting and fishing show at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal in the late 1990s.

"I never looked at any of the bills. I just paid him," Lemay said.

He estimated that Corriveau only did real work on two of 19 federally sponsored events. The other 17 events had a contract value of $28 million.

This caught Justice John Gomery by surprise.

"I have trouble believing you simply accepted any bill for any amount,'' he said. "You aren't the businessman I thought (you were).''

Lemay was also paid $880,000 from federal coffers for shows that never happened.

When he tried to reimburse the government, he was told by bureaucrats to keep the money.

Why? "'If you reimburse us you'll put (us) in chocolate,'" Lemay recalled -- a polite way for the bureaucrats to say they'd be in feces.

Instead, Lemay said he spent the money on ads for Canada in hunting and fishing magazines.

"I was just throwing money out the window," he said.

Corriveau will undoubtedly be questioned on what he did with the commissions he collected.

Ad executive Jean Brault has testified that Corriveau directed huge sums to the Liberal Party.

Brault said he paid Corriveau nearly $500,000 under a bogus contract, and alleged Corriveau directed the money to the Liberal Party's Quebec wing.

Lemay admitted that some of the $1.9 million in billing from Groupaction was "perhaps a bit inflated," but insisted Brault told him the money was to help manage sponsorship contracts.

Lemay also claimed he had no idea that Brault was being pressured to support the Liberals financially, adding no Liberals strongarmed him into sending cash.

With a report from CTV's Rosemary Thompson and files from The Canadian Press