Corruption is ‘everywhere’
Former executive committee chairman Jean Fortier says the mandate of the Charbonneau Commission should be enlarged beyond construction contracts. Corruption, Fortier says, is “everywhere.” He tells Linda Gyulai he was first offered a bribe only weeks afte
The sale of the city of Montreal’s former tree nursery in Terrebonne illustrates the malaise that infects municipal real-estate transactions.
It isn’t just Jean Fortier, the chairman of Montreal’s city executive committee under former mayor Pierre Bourque, saying that. He says he rebuffed a $100,000 bribe to ensure the sale of the 12.44-million square-foot property to a Montreal developer in November 1998.
Domenico Romagnino and his wife, Marie-Andrée Beaudet, realestate brokers who in 1999 presented an offer from a client to buy the land from the city, say their own experience left them with doubts about how multimillion-dollar decisions are made at the city.
The city listed the property, a quarter of the size of Nuns’ Island, for $4 million on the listing service of the Greater Montreal Real Estate Board in the summer of 1998.
The real-estate division in the city’s economic and urban development department enlisted Romagnino and Beaudet’s real-estate brokerage firm in Boisbriand, Immeubles Beaurom Ltd., at that time to help find a buyer.
In the spring of 1999, Romagnino and Beaudet presented the city a $2.5-million offer on the Terrebonne land from 2730-7578 Quebec Inc.
Documents provided by Romagnino and Beaudet — including a $50,000 deposit the city returned to 2730-7578 Quebec Inc. — show the civil service accepted the company’s offer, and that it was then cancelled by the executive committee.
Romagnino and Beaudet sued the city for their lost $90,000 sales commission, arguing the city couldn’t renege on a duly accepted offer to buy the real-estate.
But they lost, with the judge ruling the offer wasn’t accepted because there was no resolution to that effect.
In fact, no public records detailing the decision-making process can be found in the archives at city hall. It’s in internal city memos and receipts the couple obtained and filed in their lawsuit.
Shortly before their client’s offer on the Terrebonne land was cancelled, Romagnino said he was introduced to Fortier at a cocktail party hosted by Bourque at city hall in May 1999. There, he says, Fortier told him, “You deal with me,” on the Terrebonne sale.
Romagnino said he was invited to the cocktail by a Vision Montreal city councillor, Frank Venneri, so he could ask Bourque why there was a hold-up on the executive committee’s approval of the purchase offer on the Terrebonne land. The city’s real-estate division had been telling Romagnino that it would be on the committee’s next weekly meeting agenda for some time, he said.
Romagnino said he also met Fortier at a charity golf tournament dinner organized by La Voce, a magazine published for the Italian community in Canada where Romagnino handled marketing. Again, he said Fortier told him the Terrebonne sale “goes through me.”
For his part, Fortier said he doesn’t remember meeting Romagnino, and said it’s possible he would have taken charge of the Terrebonne file because he was head of the executive committee.
“I had a decision to have it sold right away, or to keep it. That was my only concern. What’s the fair market value right now, or should I sell it later?”
Fortier also said he doesn’t recall the $2.5-million offer from 2730-7578 Quebec Inc. ever coming before the executive committee for a vote.
Meanwhile, Romagnino and Beaudet’s documents reveal that another real-estate developer, Groupe Molesini, offered $2.6 million soon after the city cancelled 2730-7578 Quebec Inc.’s $2.5 million offer. But the city rejected the Molesini offer as well.
“The indications we have are to the effect that the offer should be increased substantially to be submitted to the municipal authorities for approval,” Michel Dupras, the realestate division chief at the time, wrote in a letter to Molesini, a copy of which Romagnino has kept.
Yet, as The Gazette reported in 2010, the city sold the property in October 2005 under Bourque’s successor, Gérald Tremblay, for $2.432 million — less than what the numbered company and Molesini had offered six years earlier. The realestate market was booming by 2005.
The buyer was Côte de Terrebonne SEC, a company financed and managed at the time by Fonds Immobilier Solidarité FTQ Inc., the investment arm of the Quebec Federation of Labour’s Solidarity Fund.
A report by Montreal’s civil service to the executive committee on the transaction didn’t mention that the Fonds Immobilier was in fact buying the property to develop a residential housing project with businessman Antonio Accurso.
The Fonds Immobilier sold its stake in the land to Accurso in August 2010.
Meanwhile, Fortier contends the land was surely worth more than $2.5 million because of its development potential.
The land, fronting on the MilleÎles River near Highway 25, was in an area protected as natural space but already coveted by some members of Terrebonne council for residential development, Fortier said.
However, internal city memos entered into evidence in Romagnino and Beaudet’s lawsuit reveal several attempts by the city to undermine its own appraisal of the Terrebonne land during the 1990s, at times attempting to raise it and at other times attempting to lower it.
The land was appraised as high as $6 million and as low as $1.7 million. A final memo from a chartered assessor in the city’s real-estate division concluded it was impossible to determine the market value because the site was so large. Instead, the assessor recommended the city sell the land in blocks to multiple buyers to maximize the return. The city ignored the advice.