Mr. Sidewalk’s family bidding on city work
New company run by Milioto’s daughter trying to get city work
Mr. Sidewalk’s family is bidding on Montreal sidewalk contracts.
Nicolo Milioto, whose nickname became famous during the Charbonneau Commission hearings where witnesses identified him as a middleman between the Mafia, construction firms and the political party that was once in power at city hall, is not listed as an owner or a director of a three-year-old firm that has been bidding on sidewalk repair contracts in three of the city’s 19 boroughs since early March.
The president of the firm, Construction Larotek Inc., is one of his daughters, Elena Milioto, who has a holding company that is listed in Quebec business registry records as first and majority shareholder of the firm. Construction Larotek’s second shareholder is another holding company owned by other individuals.
The Autorité des marchés financiers authorized the firm to bid on public contracts in September. The company was registered initially as a numbered company in October 2012 and changed its name to Construction Larotek in October 2014.
The bids that were opened in the boroughs of Ahuntsic–Cartierville, Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie and St-Léonard on March 5, 11 and 12, respectively, are the first traces of the firm bidding on public contracts in the Quebec government’s public tenders database, the Système électronique d’appel d’offres du Gouvernement du Québec (SEAO).
The bidding results for the three contracts in the SEAO list Jonathan Vella, whom Milioto identified at the Charbonneau Commission as his son-in-law, as Larotek’s contact person.
The firm didn’t win the contracts, having bid higher than the winning bidders in each call for tenders. There were 10 bidders for two of the contracts and 11 for the third. Construction Larotek’s bids ranked third, fourth or fifth lowest on the three calls for tender.
Milioto became known as “Mr. Sidewalk” during the Charbonneau Commission hearings for the large number of Montreal sidewalk contracts the company he founded, Mivela Construction, was awarded. The firm obtained a quarter of all sidewalk contracts awarded by the city of Montreal between 1996 and 2011, and was one of six firms to win 92 per cent of Montreal sidewalk contracts during the period.
Vella worked for Construction Mivela, Milioto told the commission when he testified in 2013, and business records list him as vicepresident of the firm from 2012 to this past December. In 2013, the company changed its name to Construction Irebec Inc. It isn’t authorized by the AMF to bid on public contracts.
Under Quebec’s integrity law passed in December 2012, companies must now be checked and authorized by the AMF to bid on public construction and service contracts of a certain size across the province — currently $10 million — or to get subcontracts. Companies must have AMF authorization to bid on Montreal construction contracts over $100,000, or to get subcontracts worth over $25,000.
The idea of requiring contractors to get AMF certification was a good response to the corruption scandal that has gripped the province, a Montreal city councillor says. But it also ties the city’s hands since the AMF’s approval takes precedence over the city’s contract-awarding policy.
“The moment a company gets its certificate from the AMF, we as a city don’t have the right to say the company isn’t ethical enough for us to hire them, even if it’s affiliated with this or that person,” said Émilie Thuillier, a Projet Montréal councillor who heads Montreal city council’s contracts committee.
“We’re very happy the AMF is there ... but it means that if they say
yes, then we’re obliged to say yes.”
Milioto got the nickname Mr. Sidewalk after a witness at the Charbonneau Commission said the construction entrepreneur had introduced himself to the witness as that.
Former construction boss Lino Zambito testified at the commission hearings that his firm, Infrabec, was forced to pay Milioto a 2.5 per cent cut of the value of the city contracts it was awarded as a cut to the Mafia.
RCMP surveillance video from the mid-2000s that was presented as evidence at the commission showed Milioto handing stacks of cash to now-deceased Rizzuto crime family patriarch Nicolo Rizzuto Sr. and Mob boss Rocco Sollecito, who would then stuff
the cash in their socks, in a backroom at Café Consenza, the Mafia’s headquarters at the time. Milioto was tracked at the café 236 times over two years, the commission was told.
Milioto, who stepped down as president of Construction Mivela in January 2012, testified at the commission in 2013 that he was not a member of organized crime, that he met Rizzuto socially and that what he had handed Rizzuto at Café Consenza was cash collected at community fundraisers, cash to repay a personal loan and cash collected as a middleman for Zambito.
Milioto also said he didn’t know what the Mafia is and wasn’t aware of how Rizzuto had made his money.
The moment a company gets its certificate from the AMF, we as a city don’t have the right to say the company isn’t ethical enough for us to hire them.