Former mayor Vaillancourt gets day parole after a year
Former Laval mayor Gilles Vaillancourt has been granted day parole on the sentence he received in December when he pleaded guilty to charges involving the system of collusion he ran while awarding city contracts to construction companies and engineering firms.
The Parole Board of Canada made the decision on Thursday and a written summary of the decision was released to the Montreal Gazette on Friday, just hours after the trial of Antonio Accurso ended in a mistrial.
Accurso is alleged to have been one of the people who took part in the system of collusion.
The decision means Vaillancourt — who pleaded guilty to being part of a conspiracy to commit fraud, fraud and breach of trust — will be released from a penitentiary sometime in December even though the parole board was informed the former mayor remains evasive about his role in the scheme and continues to trumpet what he accomplished as Laval’s mayor between 1989 and 2012.
According to the summary, his case-management team, the people who prepare an offender for release, found him difficult to work with because he still tries to minimize the crimes he committed.
Few details of Vaillancourt’s involvement in the system of collusion could be published in 2016 when he pleaded guilty in December.
But evidence presented during Accurso’s trial revealed that Vaillancourt actually organized the system of collusion and personally decided which of the companies involved would be awarded contracts. He also assigned two people to collect kickback payments from the colluding companies.
In a lawsuit filed last year, the city of Laval estimated that Vaillancourt pocketed more than $12 million through his corrupt schemes.
But, when he pleaded guilty, the city agreed to a settlement through which Vaillancourt returned the equivalent of $8.6 million. Most of it was cash Vaillancourt had hidden in Swiss bank accounts.
Vaillancourt, 76, was sentenced to a six-year prison term but benefitted from a technicality.
Because the system of collusion ran between 1996 and 2010, Vaillancourt’s sentence fell within legislation that has since been changed, in which offenders have access to day parole after having served one-sixth of their sentence, as opposed to one-third.
According to the written summary of the decision, the parole board was informed that “since the beginning of your incarceration, you have adopted conformist behaviour and you are not a subject of interest for (Correctional Service Canada’s) intelligence department.”
The same summary describes Vaillancourt as having been evasive when his case-management team tried to get him to open up about his role in the scheme.
“In fact, they mention that it is difficult to get you to talk about your criminal implication. It appears that you constantly change the subject and dodge questions,” the author of the summary wrote.
“You have a tendency to put yourself in a favourable light and bring up your accomplishments and projects while you were mayor, or you bring up cases that are worse than yours.”
In a letter Vaillancourt submitted to the board he described being “blinded by power, by a need to be recognized for the success (he) obtained.”
Vaillancourt has proposed doing volunteer work during the first six months of his day parole and eventually will be released to a halfway house that has already accepted him as a candidate.
The number of hours of community service he will be expected to carry out on a weekly basis will be determined by his parole officer.
He is also required to follow a series of conditions during his release, including one where he is not allowed to be involved in politics at all, even on a volunteer basis.
As well, he is required to supply all information related to his finances to his parole officer.