Corruption cops hit Quebec Liberals
Former deputy premier charged after investigation into illegal political financing
MONTREAL — Quebec’s anti-corruption police force has arrested the province’s former deputy premier and several others in an investigation into illegal political financing.
Nathalie Normandeau, a former minister of municipal affairs, along with her former chief of staff and several employees of an engineering firm are facing charges of corruption, breach of trust and conspiracy.
The arrests stem from two separate investigations: one into politicians and aides who allegedly used their positions to obtain gifts and political donations; the other into employees of the engineering firm Roche Ltd., Consulting Group, which allegedly broke the rules to win government contracts. The company is now known as Norda Stelo Inc.
“These serious charges are not only in violation of the law but they undermine our principles of democracy and the good management of common property,” said Robert Lafrenière, the province’s anti-corruption commissioner.
“Public contracts in Quebec are lucrative and are subject to strict rules designed to favour healthy competition among entrepreneurs. It’s unfair and unequal to use public contracts as a political tool and it’s also unacceptable to use the power of influence to favour elections.”
In addition to Normandeau, who was deputy premier in Jean Charest’s former Liberal government, those arrested include: her former chief of staff, Bruno Lortie; former Gaspé mayor François Roussy; and Ernest Murray, a former aide in the riding office of ex-Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois.
The former Roche employees who were arrested include: Marc-Yvan Côté, a former provincial Liberal minister and party fundraiser in charge of business development for the firm; former vice-president France Michaud; and ex-president Mario Martel. They will appear in a Quebec City court on April 20.
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, a Liberal, said Wednesday the party has changed its ways in the years since the problems with political fundraising were first brought to light.
“The party that I now lead has an exemplary method of political financing,” he said.
Charest, Quebec premier from 2003 to 2012, was reportedly out of the country and unavailable for comment.
Earlier this week, the anti-corruption unit laid 67 tax fraud charges against Roche and Pluritec, another engineering firm.
Some alleged wrongdoing involving those arrested Thursday has been detailed at the Charbonneau commission, a provincial inquiry that was called in 2011 to investigate corruption in Quebec’s construction in- dustry. Its final report was released in 2015.
The inquiry revealed the existence of annual $100,000 fundraising goals for Liberal ministers. Several inquiry witnesses said this requirement often resulted in explicit demands for donations from construction and engineering firms who did business with the government.
Roche was a major player, and Lortie told the commission that Normandeau used her power as a minister to approve infrastructure projects, particularly in the Gaspé region that she represented. Roche had a near monopoly on work in this part of Quebec and, in the Charbonneau commission’s final report commissioners were doubtful Normandeau would not have been aware of this fact.
One unnamed witness said that Normandeau, Lortie and Marc-Yvan Côté, the Liberal fundraiser who worked for Roche, had a “preponderant influence” on the awarding of municipal infrastructure contracts. The witness testified that Roche lobbying of Normandeau’s ministry “had tangible results.”
In a January 2015 letter to the Charbonneau commission, Côté denied using his political connections to obtain insider information or to circumvent the rules surrounding government contracts. He also denied organizing fundraisers for Normandeau, saying his role was limited to selling tickets.
Neither Côté nor his legal representatives could be reached for comment. A lawyer for Lortie, Pierre Rivard, declined to comment.
Neither Murray nor his legal representative could be located.
Roussy said in a statement Thursday night that he was shocked by the charges but had confidence in the justice system. He declined to comment on the charges.
Normandeau testified that she did not break political financing laws: “I have people who take care of my financing. I have no idea what goes on behind the doors at Roche. I don’t get involved in the organization of financing.”
Normandeau was suspended without pay from her current job as a Quebec City radio host, the station said. She will reportedly no longer write an occasional column for the Journal de Montréal newspaper that began last month. Normandeau’s lawyer, Maxime Roy, said his client has broken no laws. “We’re astonished (by the arrest) because, for one, we have had time since her appearance at the Charbonneau commission to study the entire case, but also because of the time that has passed. We were convinced that the authorities had come to the same conclusion as us. Obviously, we know today that’s not the case,” Roy said.
“I think that if it took so much time it’s because they were not certain themselves about the guilt of Madame Normandeau.”
At the Charbonneau hearings, former Roche employee André Côté testified that company executives France Michaud and Mario Martel set the annual budgets for the company’s political financing activities.
In one instance recounted by construction company owner Lino Zambito, Michaud asked him to buy $10,000 worth of tickets to a Normandeau fundraiser — well above the $1,000 legal limit. At the time, Zambito’s firm was working on a government construction project overseen by Roche engineers.
Michaud was to have been sentenced Wednesday in another corruption case charge, this one involving a municipal contract in Boisbriand, north of Montreal, the Journal de Montréal reported. The hearing was delayed because her lawyer could not attend the hearing.
Martel’s lawyer, Jean-Claude Hébert, declined to comment on the charges. Michaud’s criminal lawyer, Charles Levasseur, could not be reached for comment.