Contrecoeur trial to hear final arguments in January
The Contrecoeur fraud trial may be nearing an end, nearly two years after it began.
The defence rested its case this week, and dates were set for Court of Quebec Judge Yvan Poulin to hear final arguments from the prosecution and the defence in mid-January.
The trial of former Montreal city executive committee chairman Frank Zampino, businessman Paolo Catania and four former executives of Catania’s construction firm began in February 2016.
They were arrested in 2012 in connection with the 2007 sale of city-owned land known as Faubourg Contrecoeur to Construction Frank Catania et Associés.
The city’s real-estate agency discounted $14.7 million for decontamination and other costs from the $19.1-million winning bid that the company submitted. It wound up paying $4.4 million to purchase the land to build a housing project valued at $300 million.
The prosecution argues that the company was included in private discussions with the Société d’habitation et de développement de Montréal’s consultants to prepare studies and estimates for developing the site, which gave it information that its competitors didn’t have when a call for proposals was launched.
However, the defence argues the firm was asked to provide its expert opinion before the head of SHDM, Martial Fillion, abruptly decided to sell the land through a call for proposals instead of one-on-one negotiation. Fillion, arrested with the others in 2012, has since died.
Zampino still has two requests pending to halt his fraud trial, which Poulin has ruled will be heard after the final arguments.
One argues that his constitutional rights were violated because a police wiretap in a separate investigation in 2015 intercepted some of his communications with his lawyers before the Contrecoeur trial began.
The other motion argues an abuse of procedure because Zampino was arrested in September on fraud and corruption charges in a separate investigation while he was in cross-examination at the Contrecoeur trial.
A separate trial for Bernard Trépanier, the former chief fundraiser for Zampino’s Union Montreal party and one of the people arrested in the Contrecoeur case in 2012, is to open in April.