Ex-MNA had doubts about Charest, UPAC told
At least two former Liberal MNAs were interviewed by Quebec’s anti-corruption unit in its ongoing investigation into the party ’s fundraising methods while former premier Jean Charest was its leader.
Parts of the interviews — with Robert Benoit, a longtime Quebec Liberal Party member who served as its president from 1985 to 1989 and was the MNA for Orford between 1989 and 2003, and Bernard Brodeur, the MNA for the Shefford riding between 1994 and 2007 — are summarized in an affidavit prepared to obtain search warrants in Opération Mâchurer, an investigation by the Unité permanente anticorruption (UPAC).
The document was subject to a publication ban, but some sections can be reported on following a decision by Quebec Superior Court Justice Hélène Di Salvo following a request by the Montreal Gazette and other media. Other sections of the affidavit remain subject to a temporary publication ban.
As has been widely reported for several months, the investigation is centred on Marc Bibeau, a wealthy West Island businessman who solicited campaign contributions for the Quebec Liberal Party in the past, and Violette Trépanier, a former Liberal cabinet minister and the former head of fundraising for the party.
In November, during a speech at the party’s 150th anniversary celebrations, Charest said allegations concerning him that have leaked out of Mâchurer are false.
The affidavit was prepared by Sûreté du Québec Sgt. David Ouellet, a UPAC investigator who requested, and obtained, search warrants allowing investigators to seize documents from Trépanier’s home in December 2016. UPAC lists “bribery of judicial officers, frauds on the government, breach of trust” and donations made to a political party in order to obtain or retain a contract as the possible crimes they are investigating.
UPAC asked for permission to seize “all documentation related to fundraising for the Quebec Liberal Party (and) all correspondence between Violette Trépanier and the people who collected funds for the party.” They also planned to seize “all documentation and/or correspondence in connection with nominations to the government.” The last person mentioned in the affidavit as a witness who was interviewed by UPAC is Solange Prévost, an assistant to Chantal Landry, the person who was responsible for job nominations for the Charest government.
UPAC investigators went twice in December 2016 to Trépanier’s home — a modest townhouse she rents near the Olympic Stadium in the Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough. By comparison, Bibeau owns a luxury home that he purchased in 2009 in Baied’Urfé on Lakeshore Rd. with a view of Lac St-Louis and located next to the Baie-d’Urfé yacht club. A high metal gate supported by two brick pillars stands out as an eyesore on the lakeside roadway. In 2016, UPAC and Revenue Québec executed search warrants at the offices of a company Bibeau owned in St-Eustache.
According to the affidavit, Benoit told UPAC investigators that he was taken aback by the change in culture that took over the Liberal Party after Charest became its leader in 1998. Before then, Benoit said, the party’s attitude toward fundraising involved getting people to sign up for $5 party membership cards and dinners held at community halls. He said one fundraising event held at the Club St. Denis (a private club on Sherbrooke St. E. that has since closed) shortly after Charest joined the party was entirely organized by members of Quebec’s business establishment, referred to in the affidavit as “Quebec Inc.” According to Benoit, the business leaders raised $500,000 in one night while he and other Liberal party organizers were pushed aside.
“(Benoit’s) doubts about Jean Charest and the people who surrounded him began at this moment. The party had become more of an electoral organization than one that debated ideas. The party lines become more dictated by Jean Charest and his close entourage than by party members,” the UPAC investigator wrote.