Star Charbonneau witness expected to testify at Contrecoeur fraud trial
Michel Lalonde, the former engineering firm executive who testified at the Charbonneau commission about a system of collusion and political kickbacks involving Montreal municipal contracts in the mid-2000s, is expected to testify at the Contrecoeur fraud trial on Friday.
Lalonde would be the first of about 50 “civilian” witnesses who are expected to be called by the Crown at the trial of Frank Zampino, the former no. 2 politician at Montreal city hall, former construction magnate Paolo Catania and four former executives who worked for Catania’s firm. The trial began in February 2016. After more than a year of delay while the court dealt with a series of motions, it only began hearing from police and expert witnesses last month.
Lalonde was president of the engineering consulting firm Génius Conseil.
In the mid-2000s, his firm, then known as Groupe Séguin, received several mandates from the city’s real estate agency, Société d’habitation et de développement de Montréal (SHDM), which had been asked by the city to find a buyer for a municipal site known as Faubourg Contrecoeur to construct a housing development.
Groupe Séguin was paid to carry out some of the studies that were used to assess the cost to decontaminate the Contrecoeur site, documents shown so far at the trial indicate.
The SHDM sold the land in eastend Montreal to Construction Frank Catania et Associés Inc. in 2007. The firm paid $4.4 million, while the municipal assessment was $31 million. The decontamination cost was a factor in the discounted price.
When he testified at the Charbonneau commission in 2013, Lalonde said his firm, along with six other Quebec engineering giants, colluded between 2005-09 to secure contracts from the city and gave a three per cent kickback to Union Montreal, the party of thenmayor Gérald Tremblay.
Lalonde described his role as “spokesman” for the group of engineering firms, co-ordinating between the firms’ executives to decide who would bid on which contracts.