Contrecoeur trial to be extended by three weeks

Catania gave holiday gifts of wine to politicians, testimony reveals

Entrepreneur Paolo Catania used to send bottles of wine to politicians in at least a dozen municipalities during the December holidays, and the task fell to Serge Marsolais, an employee of Catania’s construction firm, to deliver the gifts to such people as former Montreal mayor Gérald Tremblay and his right-hand man, Frank Zampino, Marsolais testified at the Contrecoeur fraud trial on Tuesday.

Zampino is one of six co-accused standing trial together before a judge alone in connection with the city’s sale of land known as Faubourg Contrecoeur to Catania’s firm, Construction Frank Catania et Associés Inc., for a fraction of its assessed value in 2007 to build a housing project.

Tremblay is not accused. However, he testified at the trial as a Crown witness in early May. Tremblay told the court he didn’t know Catania personally, other than to have crossed paths with him at a couple of cocktail fundraisers organized by his party, Union Montreal, which ruled city hall from 2002 to 2012.

Marsolais testified he delivered six bottles of wine to Zampino’s home on one of two occasions. But the six were among 300 bottles the witness said he had to deliver in several municipalities, and not just Montreal.

It wasn’t a new practice for Catania’s firm, it appears. Marsolais said he delivered wine to Tremblay’s predecessor, Pierre Bourque.

Marsolais was the first of three witnesses who took the stand on Tuesday as the prosecution announced it was attempting to speed things up because the final date set for the trial is in one month.

Because of the looming deadline, Crown lawyer Pascal Lescarbeau agreed to a defence request to extend the trial by three weeks.

As a result, it appears likely the trial will be suspended in late June and resume in late August, when all parties are again available.

The accused were arrested in 2012.

Years earlier, the city had mandated its real estate agency, the Société d’habitation et de développement de Montréal (SHDM), to find a developer to buy the 38-hectare land to build 1,800 units that included affordable and social housing.

Former city manager Claude Léger, who began testifying on Tuesday, told the court that Zampino, who was chairman of the city executive committee, imposed short deadlines on Joseph Farinacci, the then-director of the city’s real-estate department, to prepare the paperwork for the Contrecoeur sale in late 2006 and early 2007.

It didn’t seem unusual, Léger said, but not a lot of city files had such short delays.

Because some city officials had transformed SHDM into a private corporation before the sale, Léger said the city had to sell the land to SHDM, which in turn sold it to the Catania firm, because the city couldn’t just transfer land to an entity that no longer belonged to it.

However, Farinacci objected to the rapid sale, telling Zampino that a study for SHDM that had quadrupled the initial cost estimate to decontaminate the site required further vetting since the city and SHDM were agreeing to deduct the decontamination cost from the $19.1-million price offered by the Catania firm.

The city wound up selling the land to the SHDM for $14.8 million, though its municipal assessment

Marsolais testified he delivered six bottles of wine to Zampino’s home on one of two occasions.

was $31 million. The sale included a provision Léger said he had recommended, that the discount from the $19.1-million sale price not exceed $14.7 million for decontamination and mitigation measures.

SHDM sold the land to the Catania firm for $4.4 million after deducting $14.7 million.

Farinacci quit the city in March 2007. He’s expected to testify next week.

A second employee of Construction Frank Catania et Associés Inc. testified he contributed $1,000 to Union Montreal in 2010 and $3,000 to the Quebec Liberal Party around then after hearing other employees did.

Yvan Corriveau, who worked as director of real estate development on the Contrecoeur project from 2007 to 2012, testified that no one told him to contribute. He also said he didn’t recall whether he was reimbursed, although he remembers receiving a larger-thanusual bonus from his employer that year.

The Catania firm built most of the phases of the residential project. The SHDM took back two remaining parcels in an out-of-court settlement with the firm’s liquidator in 2015.