Witness implicates top city officials
Michel Lalonde says he paid Robert Marcil a $5,000 ‘cut’ per public works contract
The head of an engineering firm that won municipal contracts says the former director of the city’s public works department and the former president of the executive committee were willing participants in a system of collusion that spanned years.
The head of a local engineering firm made more damning allegations at the Charbonneau Commission on Thursday, implicating both the former director of Montreal’s public works department and the former head of the city’s executive committee in a system of collusion that he claimed they all willingly participated in for years.
Michel Lalonde named Robert Marcil and Frank Zampino repeatedly during his second day on the stand, kicking things off by claiming that he paid Marcil a “cut” of about $5,000 for every public works contract the city bureaucrat helped rig.
The city regularly hires engineering firms to draw up plans and monitor construction work sites on its behalf, but they, like construction companies, must compete for that work. As public works director, Lalonde said, Mar- cil was in a position to get the right people on the selection committees and make sure the contracts were awarded to the desired firm.
Lalonde said the cash kickbacks would be passed to Marcil through former Union Montreal financing head Bernard Trépanier, but that on one occasion, in 2009, he personally handed Marcil between $1,000 and $2,000 to secure a contract in Rivièredes-Prairies. Marcil left his job as the city’s public works director in the summer of 2009, following allegations that he had vacationed in Italy with a local construction boss.
According to Lalonde, Zampino’s role in the overall scheme was somewhat less complex. Lalonde alleged the former executive committee head attended at least three meetings where Zampino, Lalonde and Trépanier reviewed a list of upcoming contracts, and then pre-determined the winners.
The self-described “spokesperson” for the engineering firms involved in the alleged schemes, Lalonde said he was chosen to liaise with the city officials starting in about 2004.
“Mr. Trépanier asked me if I could play a role of spokesperson for the firms … to speak to them,” he told the commissioners on Thursday.
Like the construction companies they monitored, Lalonde said, the engineering firms colluded regularly among themselves, both to determine who would get what projects and to organize their illegal funding of political parties. He testified he was in regular contact with people at Genivar, Roche, Dessau, CIMA+ and SNC-Lavalin, among others.
Lalonde continued Thursday to detail his own company’s contributions to Union Montreal, the party of former mayor Gérald Tremblay. He said that between 2004 and 2009, Groupe Séguin (now Génuis Conseil) “probably” gave the party roughly $100,000 a year. That included the three per cent “cut” Lalonde said he gave Union Montreal off the top of every contract Groupe Séguin won.
Lalonde also admitted on Wednesday to a one-time donation of $100,000 in the fall of 2004. In exchange, he said, the company got work. He said he didn’t know what would have happened if he had refused to co-operate.
“When you’re welcome, it’s easier than when you’re not welcome,” was his only explanation.
The whole house of cards came crashing down in 2009, Lalonde recalled, with the creation of Quebec’s anti-corruption police unit, known as the Hammer squad.
“It created a certain worry among everyone,” he said.
Lalonde said he then told Trépanier, who had left Union Montreal in 2006 but is alleged to have continued to funnel huge sums of cash into the party’s coffers, that he wanted out.
“I was conscious that this was a perilous mission I was undertaking.”
Lalonde is expected to retake the stand on Monday morning.