MONTREAL - Chuck Guite has failed in his bid to get the Quebec Court of Appeal to overturn his conviction on fraud charges related to the sponsorship scandal.

Guite, a former bureaucrat, was in charge of the federal sponsorship program where friends of the federal Liberals were paid in the 1990s for little or no work.

A jury convicted him in 2006 on all five charges he faced in connection with allegations he defrauded the federal government.

He was sentenced to 42 months in jail.

The sponsorship program was supposed to promote national unity in the wake of the razor-thin win by federalists in the 1995 Quebec referendum.

Guite left the federal government in 1999.

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