Trial hears of labyrinth of companies
Accurso trial hears of many companies and overseas accounts set up by Marcotte
Richard Marcotte, the former mayor of Mascouche, created an international labyrinth of companies and bank accounts before construction entrepreneur Antonio Accurso allegedly bribed him in exchange for municipal contracts.
Pascale Boutin, a forensic accountant with the Sûreté du Québec, testified Friday at the Joliette courthouse before a jury hearing evidence on the fifth day of Accurso’s trial.
Accurso, 66, is charged with using illegal means to influence a municipal official between 2005 and 2012, and of having committed a breach of trust between 2006 and 2008. Marcotte is at the centre of those charges. The former mayor died on May 23, 2016.
Between 2005 and 2010, companies owned by Accurso were awarded several contracts by Mascouche or affiliated regional municipal organizations. That includes a $40-million contract to expand the Régie d’aqueduc intermunicipale des Moulins and $15 million for the Régie d’assainissement des eaux Terrebonne-Mascouche services shared by Mascouche and other municipalities.
Boutin began testifying on Thursday and said Marcotte and two partners — Denys Laberge and Laurent Labrecque — “erected a complex legal structure of entities and screen companies, by using straw men acting as administrators or signatories.
“They each incorporated at least one (company) in Panama, registered to an entity in Liechtenstein, and opened bank accounts in Switzerland, all in tax havens where banking secrets are a way of doing business.”
According to a report Boutin submitted as evidence, Marcotte was tied to three companies: Bluegrass Equities Inc. (he has signatory authority over its bank accounts), Binella Anstalt and Kestrel Assets Corp.
Boutin presented her third, and final, report to the jury Friday. As she neared the end of answering questions from a prosecutor, she revealed that in 2008, funds from a cheque signed by Accurso for $300,000 from Accurso’s company Simard Beaudry Construction Inc. ended up in one of Kestrel Assets Corp.’s seven bank accounts.
The $300,000 was made out to a company called Verona Equities Corp., a company based in Panama. According to the third report prepared by Boutin, more than $705,000 from Verona Equities Corp. and another company called Honeycliffe Limited were deposited into bank accounts controlled by Marcotte between Jan. 1, 2007 and April 15, 2011. Boutin said $270,000 from the $300,000 cheque signed by Accurso ended up in Kestrel Assets Corp.’s bank accounts.
On April 15, 2011, all the money in Kestrel Assets Corp.’s bank accounts (at the time a total of $222,225) were transferred to another company and Marcotte’s accounts were closed.
As part of his cross-examination, defence lawyer Marc Labelle asked Boutin to go over the complicated series of bank transfers. He also highlighted the fact that the cheque issued by Simard Beaudry was certified. Labelle asked Boutin if she knew if someone else at Simard Beaudry could have prepared the cheque and that merely Accurso, as head of the construction company, signed it. Boutin said she was given no evidence of how the cheque was prepared.
Boutin also provided details on what Marcotte purchased using two credit cards he used in 2006 and 2007. A letter from one of Marcotte’s companies addressed to one of the banks that issued the credit cards stated: “Request for a Visa Privilege card for Mr. Richard Marcotte. We expressly ask that this card never be sent in any way to Canada. Do not send correspondence to Canada, either.”
According to a breakdown Boutin did on the credit cards, Marcotte used them to purchase more than $8,000 in jewelry, $5,000 in clothes and another $8,000 in works of art. He also withdrew more than $14,000 in cash on the cards.
Included in her report was a note of how Marcotte used more than $64,000 from the money he transferred out of Kestrel Assets Corp.’s bank accounts to pay off the debt accumulated on the credit cards.
Earlier this week, the jury was shown a long series of photos seized in 2012 from Marcotte’s home during the UPAC investigation showing Marcotte vacationed on Accurso’s yacht, called Touch, in 2006 and 2008. In at least one of the photos, Marcotte is seen posing in a baseball cap with the word Touch on it.
When Boutin finished testifying, prosecutor Pascal Grimard announced the Crown’s evidence was closed.
When the trial began on Monday, Superior Court Justice James Brunton told the jury the trial might last six weeks. But the Crown presented all of its evidence in five days.
Brunton also informed the jury the lawyers in the trial will debate a legal matter on Monday and possibly Tuesday and the jury is expected to sit again on Wednesday.