Zampino an ‘exceptional’ right hand: Tremblay testifies
Former Montreal mayor Gérald Tremblay was the long-awaited “star” witness at the Contrecoeur fraud trial, but in the end he was questioned for barely an hour by the Crown when he was called to take the stand on Monday.
Crown prosecutor Pascal Lescarbeau asked Tremblay nothing about the conspiracy being alleged against the accused.
Instead, the prosecutor’s questions concerned Tremblay’s foray into municipal politics as mayoral candidate in 2001, his choice of Frank Zampino as chairman of the powerful city executive committee after winning the election, what he knew about the activities of certain people working for his party and about whether he knew construction magnate Paolo Catania.
Zampino and Catania are among nine people who were arrested by Quebec’s anti-corruption squad, UPAC, in 2012 in connection with the sale of city-owned land known as Faubourg Contrecoeur to Catania’s firm in 2007.
The trial, which is by judge alone, began in February 2016, but Tremblay is among the first of what are expected to be 50 witnesses.
Tremblay and his executive committee mandated the city’s real-estate arm, the Société d’habitation et de développement de Montréal (SHDM), to set up the sale of the disused land for residential realestate development for the city.
The SHDM wound up selling the land at the end of a call for proposals for a fraction of its municipal assessment.
Another man who was arrested with the others, Bernard Trépanier, was the chief fundraiser for Tremblay and Zampino’s political party, Union Montreal.
Trépanier is being tried separately.
Zampino was an “exceptional” right-hand man who had experience, credibility and clout among other members of council, Tremblay said in response to the Crown’s questions in court. No one ever had anything negative to say about Zampino, he said.
Tremblay, who described his occupation to the court as retired lawyer, was mayor from 2002 until his abrupt resignation in late 2012.
He last made a public appearance in 2013 when he was called to testify at the Charbonneau commission of inquiry into corruption in Quebec’s construction industry. Tremblay answered similar questions during his appearance at the inquiry.
Of Catania, Tremblay told the court he didn’t know the man personally and only crossed paths with him at a few political fundraisers.
And of Trépanier, Tremblay told the court he would see him wait for Zampino at city hall after the weekly closed-door executive committee meeting and said he found it “unacceptable” that his party’s chief fundraiser and executive committee chairman had such a close relationship.
Zampino was chairman of the executive committee from 2002 to 2008.
In referring to Zampino throughout his testimony, Tremblay used his former top councillor’s first and last name together.
At one point, Lescarbeau asked Tremblay whether he was aware that two people working for his party — official agent Marc Deschamps and legal adviser Mario Paul-Hus — had been members of the selection committee that chose the winning bid for the Contrecoeur land.
He learned afterward, Tremblay said, and as a result ordered his party to issue an internal edict forbidding its volunteers to sit on selection committees at the city of Montreal.
While the Crown’s questioning of Tremblay was brief, the crossexamination by Zampino’s lawyer, Isabel Schurman, carried on for most of the day.
In fact, Tremblay’s cross-examination will resume on Tuesday, after former executive committee member Benoit Labonté testifies via satellite from the Philippines.
Much of the back and forth between Schurman and Tremblay concerned recalling who on the executive committee was responsible for the city’s paramunicipal real-estate corporations, the SHDM and the Société de développement de Montréal (SDM), and who was responsible for housing files.
Schurman repeatedly asked whether former executive committee member Georges Bossé was the person who was responsible for the agencies until he decided not to seek re-election in late 2005. Tremblay at one point shot back that he had specifically asked Zampino to coordinate the sale of the Contrecoeur land.
“It was clear it was Frank Zampino who was responsible,” Tremblay said.
City officials merged the two paramunicipal bodies, which were subject to audits by the city’s auditor general, and privatized the new entity, also called SHDM, as a private, non-profit corporation between 2006 and early 2007.
The privatization was done despite concerns from the city’s legal department, but an outside legal opinion obtained by a top city manager at the time, Robert Cassius de Linval, said the move was legal, Tremblay told the court.
However, Tremblay said, the city transformed the SHDM back into a paramunicipal agency in 2009 after “questions were raised.”