LEGAL TEAM FACES DAUNTING TASK
Former right-hand man to mayor charged with eight others in municipal fraud case
It will take three months to analyze the evidence against former city executive committee president Frank Zampino and eight others facing fraud charges before their cases can go to trial. That’s because investigators handed over the equivalent of 1,400 truckloads worth of evidence, Linda Gyulai and Sue Montgomery report.
It looks like it’s going to be a long trial for Frank Zampino, the former right-hand man of Mayor Gérald Tremblay, and eight others accused of fraud in a municipal realestate deal. Also accused is a construction company, Construction Frank Catania & Associés Inc.
Crown prosecutor Nicole Martineau told a courtroom on Friday the preliminary inquiry alone – which will weigh whether there is sufficient evidence to go trial – will probably last three months.
That’s because the inquiry will analyze the equivalent of 1,400 truckloads of evidence, according to the anti-corruption division of the Quebec Crown prosecutor’s office.
“We have many cases of documents,” said Sylvain Lépine, chief prosecutor of the anti-corruption division, outside the courtroom following a brief appearance by lawyers representing the firm, Zampino and eight other individuals arrested by Quebec’s Unité permanente anticorruption (UPAC) in May.
The evidence, on computer, amounts to 250 terabytes, Lépine said. “So it requires many days to present the evidence because of the complexity and weight of the evidence.”
Zampino, the former chairperson of the city executive committee, and the others face a combined 13 charges of fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, breach of trust and fraud against the government over a redevelopment project on the city-owned Faubourg Contrecoeur site in east-end Montreal. The awarding of the Contrecoeur project to Catania & Associés was overseen by the city’s real-estate agency, the Société d’habitation et de développement de Montréal (SHDM).
The SHDM sold the land to the construction firm in 2007 for $4.4 million, even though it had a municipal assessment of $31 million. An audit for the SHDM on the Contrecoeur project by the firm Samson Bélair/Deloitte & Touche in 2009 found several irregularities in the deal.
Seven of the charges relate to a stratagem that was used to favour Catania in the awarding of the Faubourg Contrecoeur project, Lépine said. Two other charges relate to financial favours given to the company. Another two charges, one of which is listed in the charge sheet as being against Zampino and the other one against the construction firm, “relate to a trip to the south that was made between certain of the accused,” Lépine said. The two charges stem from March 2008, the charge sheet says.
Another two charges, which relate to activities as far back as late 2004, concern political financing, he said.
Following the arrests in May, UPAC officials called Zampino the kingpin of a plot to defraud the SHDM of $1 million in the awarding of the contract to redevelop the Faubourg Contrecoeur site.
Zampino chaired the executive committee during the time the Contrecoeur project was put together.
Two other past members of Tremblay’s inner circle are also charged.
One, Martial Fillion, was general manager of SHDM when the Faubourg Contrecoeur contract was being awarded. The agency fired him over irregularities in 2008.
Fillion was program manager for Montreal Island Citizens Movement, Tremblay’s party, in his 2001 election campaign. Fillion then became Tremblay’s chief of staff at city hall before being selected by an outside firm to be general manager of the SHDM in 2002.
The other is Ber nard Trépanier, who was a fundraiser for Tremblay’s party. He has been dubbed “Mr. three per cent” for being involved in a scheme where three per cent was skimmed from the value of publicworks contracts and channelled to political parties, elected representatives and city bureaucrats.
The other accused are Paolo Catania, owner and president of Construction Frank Catania & Associés Inc.; André Fortin, the firm’s CEO; Pasquale Fedele, a former vice-president of the firm; Pascal Patrice, a former environmental director of the firm; Martin D’Aoust, vice-president of infrastructure for the firm; and Daniel Gauthier, CEO of urban planning firm Plania, formerly known as Groupe Gauthier, Biancamano, Bolduc. The latter firm was criticized in the Samson Bélair/Deloitte & Touche audit for destroying documents from the five companies that bid in the qualifying round of the tendering process.
The accused will next appear in court Sept. 14 for another formality hearing to allow their lawyers to meet a coordinating judge who will oversee all the cases.
The Crown disclosed partial evidence to the accused on Friday. It will disclose the remainder in the coming week, Lépine said.