Coderre prepared ‘to let the process go’ after raid on police HQ
Imad Sawaya, chief of staff to Montreal police director Philippe Pichet and the apparent focus of a series of raids carried out by the Sureté du Québec on Thursday, has been suspended from duty pending the outcome of a fraud and breach of trust investigation concerning overtime claims and bonuses.
Pichet confirmed the suspension on his Twitter account Friday morning. The Montreal police department was unable to immediately confirm reports Sawaya will continue to collect his salary during the suspension.
Incumbent mayor Denis Coderre said he was not planning to intervene in the dossier, allowing justice to take its course. He noted that Montreal’s chief of police has been open to the media, holding press conferences to explain the situation.
“The reality is that everybody is the same under the law and that’s it,” Coderre said. “If there is something that is broken, that’s it, somebody will pay for it . ... We don’t want to presume anything else other than how the process goes. Sometimes people were saying (in the past) that supposedly I was intervening (in police affairs) and now that we’re letting the process go we’re saying, ‘Oh, I should do something about it’.
“There was a raid, nobody’s pleased with that, of course. But at the end of the day we have to let the process go. I’m the mayor of Montreal, I’m not in charge of police operations.”
“Of course we need to let the SQ do its work and we will follow very closely,” Projet Montréal leader and mayoral candidate Valérie Plante said. “At this point our problem is with the outgoing mayor. He hasn’t been able to set a straight line between him and the chief of police. …
“My type of leadership will be very different. It will be very transparent.”
Speaking to reporters outside police headquarters — itself one of the locales raided by provincial investigators — Pichet confirmed to reporters that the raids concerned Sawaya, although he had few details on what triggered the operation.
“I was informed that the Sûreté du Québec was preparing to raid various sites. We’re talking about a police station, the city’s payroll office, police headquarters as well as the police archive department,” he said. “All of it in connection with a complaint made ... concerning an allegation of fraud and breach of trust.
“As far as I know, this is the first time a raid has been carried out at police headquarters.”
Reports late Thursday stated the raids were carried out on the basis of allegations that a high-ranking Montreal police officer had been collecting overtime and bonuses they were not entitled to.
Pichet said that as far as he knew, the fraud investigation “dates from 2015, concerning overtime and the collection of bonuses.”
“To my knowledge this had already been verified and no anomalies were found. What I’m learning now is that someone called the Sûreté du Québec (again concerning the allegations). Now we have to let the investigation take its course.
“As far as I knew, everything to do with that file was found to be in order . ... Maybe there’s more information that I don’t have. But it’s not for me to conduct the investigation, that’s for the Sûreté du Québec.”
Pichet said his force had and would continue to co-operate fully with the SQ investigation.
While headed by the SQ, the raids were carried out by a special, multi-police-force unit created last February in the wake of a series of allegations made about the Montreal force’s internal affairs department.