Justice John Gomery has partially lifted the lid covering the wriggling worms in the sponsorship scandal, allowing some of Groupaction president Jean Brault's testimony to be made public.

The Globe and Mail has the most comprehensive coverage.

To see video of all the various political actors and pundits reacting to the ban's lifting, see this CTV.ca story.

To access transcrips of testimony at the Gomery inquiry, go to www.gomery.ca/en/transcripts/.

Here's an excerpt from the Globe story:

A Montreal ad executive at the heart of the federal sponsorship scandal says Liberal organizers pressed him into secretly donating more than a million dollars to them through various covert methods that included envelopes full of cash, fake invoices and putting phony employees on his payroll.

The devastating testimony Jean Brault gave at the Gomery inquiry had been kept secret until now because of a publication ban so it wouldn't prejudice criminal proceedings against him.

Mr. Justice John Gomery partially lifted the blackout.

Mr. Brault also said he made disguised payments to provincial political parties, in contravention of Quebec law. He illicitly gave at least $100,000 to the Parti Québécois and $50,000 to Jean Charest's provincial Liberals.

Mr. Brault's testimony portrayed a broad pattern of deception that spanned years and involved several people, including senior party organizers, a brother and a friend of then prime minister Jean Chrétien and several past and current ministerial advisers.

"There is a lot of creativity in their demands," he said.

The inquiry has been checking whether the millions of dollars a handful of Quebec agencies received in contracts after the 1995 referendum were tied to benefits the Liberal Party of Canada received from those firms.

Mr. Brault gave the most candid answer yet to that question.

He said Benoît Corbeil, the executive director of the party's Quebec wing, once asked for a $400,000 donation and promised that he would get him a $3-million sponsorship contract. The commission Mr. Brault would earn on that contract was to compensate for the donation.

He said other disguised donations he made included half a million dollars in false billings to Jacques Corriveau, a confidant of Mr. Chrétien.

"When it comes to sponsorships, it's clear in my mind. If it wasn't for the investments of all types that we made towards the party, despite our abilities, our share of the pie would have been very small," he said.

While some of his allegations cannot be independently verified, many others were buttressed by scores of bogus invoices, cashed cheques, annotations in agenda books and other records the inquiry's forensic accountants dug up.