MILIOTO EXITS, 200 I DON’T KNOWS LATER
Alleged mob middleman Nicolo Milioto wraps up four days of testimony at the Charbonneau Commission. Monique Muise reports that prying information out of him proved one of the commission’s toughest challenges to date.
Tempers flared and frustration boiled over at the Charbonneau Commission on Thursday as the testimony of a tight-lipped witness finally drew to a close after four days.
Prying information out of retired construction boss and alleged Mob middleman Nicolo Milioto proved one of the commission’s toughest challenges to date. The 64-year-old uttered the phrase “I don’t know” more than 200 times during his week on the stand and perhaps left more questions than answers in his wake.
On Thursday, Milioto continued to contradict the testimony of numerous past witnesses, denying that he handed cash bribes to civil servants in Montreal, that he helped orchestrate a system of collusion that defrauded taxpayers of millions or that he once threatened a party organizer for Union Montreal.
That party organizer, Martin Dumont, “is a professional liar,” Milioto said. Dumont testified last fall he once accepted an envelope filled with cash from Milioto, and that when he started asking the wrong kinds of questions, the Mivela Construction boss warned him “you don’t want to end up in my sidewalks.”
Milioto swore Thursday he’s never even met Dumont — adding the former party staffer’s allegations had “enraged” him.
“Nick Milioto never gave envelopes to anyone,” he quipped, referring to himself in the third person.
That includes former city of Montreal public works head Robert Marcil, former municipal engineer Luc Leclerc and former city bureaucrat Gilles Vézina, he said. He acknowledged that he treated those three men to bottles of wine and the occasional dinner, but maintained that it ended there — and that the so-called “little favours” were simply in the spirit of camaraderie.
According to Milioto, the only thing he expected in return was speedy service when it came time for the city to pay his company for completed work.
During his testimony before the inquiry last fall, Leclerc admitted to accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash bribes from numerous construction bosses. He also alleged that Milioto had repaved his driveway for free. Milioto testified Thursday that he did send two men to Leclerc’s house at one point, “but I don’t know what they did.”
Phone records show Leclerc called Milioto over 100 times between 2004 and 2009, often right after Mivela Construction had been awarded a job.
Presented with a list of municipal contracts that Leclerc had testified were rigged, Mil- ioto assured the commissioners that the bidding process had been fair.
“Me, I’m giving you my truth, my version of the truth,” he said. “If people told you that it was rigged, I’m telling you it wasn’t. … I never rigged a contract.”
But while he maintained that he did nothing special to curry favour among municipal officials, Mivela Construction nevertheless saw a dramatic upswing in the number of contracts it was awarded by the city beginning in 2006.
The company’s annual profits increased “drastically,” said Charbonneau Commission chief counsel Sonia LeBel as she presented Milioto with a table of figures. They showed that most of the increase in contract work came from the central city rather than the boroughs.
“Bidding (on contracts) is luck,” Milioto said, dismissing LeBel’s suggestion that he had made his own luck by lining the pockets of civil servants.
In 2010, however, Mivela Construction’s luck seemingly ran out. Not a single central city project was awarded to the company that year, even though 2009 had been its most profitable to date with $29 million in public works contracts from the city of Montreal and its boroughs. Milioto called that number “impossible.”
“My memory is that I never made more than $11 million (in a single year).”
City hall introduced a new code of ethics in late-2009, and Operation Hammer was underway by November of that same year.
As Milioto’s testimony drew to a close, he was asked whether he had donated money to political parties in Quebec. He replied that he had purchased tickets to numerous cocktail fundraisers for the Parti Québécois, the Quebec Liberal Party and Union Montreal, but denied any illegal financing. He also characterized his relationship with former Union Montreal financing head Ber- nard Trépanier as casual — despite the fact that phone records indicate the men spoke at least 81 times between 2005 and 2009 — often when there were no fundraisers on the horizon. Trépanier officially left the party in 2006.
Justice France Charbonneau listened intently to the witness and interjected only a handful of times Thursday, but she made no effort to hide her displeasure with Milioto. Co-commissioner Renaud Lachance, known for his even temper, also appeared to finally lose patience.
“Do you know how many people you have contradicted?” Lachance snapped. “It’s four. Four people up to this point.”
Milioto repeated that he could only provide “my version of the truth.”
No one wished to crossexamine him, and he was brusquely dismissed without thanks.