This story was published Jan. 18, 2013.
Unlike most Quebecers watching the Charbonneau Commission hearings this fall, the former chairman of Montreal’s executive committee is not shocked by the allegations of corruption and collusion in municipal politics that have come to light.
Jean Fortier says he lived it. During his brief tenure as the second-in-command to former mayor Pierre Bourque, Fortier says he was offered a bribe, blackmailed, pressured to shake down a city consultant to contribute to his political party, and even offered a chance to become the next mayor if he cooperated.
More than a decade after leaving office, Fortier spoke to The Gazette about his experiences while he was the top city councillor at city hall.
The mandate of the Charbonneau Commission should be enlarged beyond construction contracts, Fortier says. Corruption touches other fields of municipal management, including computers, permits and zoning, he says.
“It’s everywhere,” says Fortier, 61, still sporting the trademark goatee he wore when he was executive committee chairman. “It’s clearer and clearer that this commission will have to be expanded into a commission on municipal management.”
His story begins just a few weeks after he was elected to city council and tapped by Bourque to lead the executive committee in November 1998.
Fortier says Claude Baillargeon, a real-estate broker to whom he had been introduced through an assistant around the time of the election, called his office in late November to invite him to visit a vast undeveloped property the city of Montreal was selling in Terrebonne on the North Shore.
The 12.44-million square-foot property, one-quarter of the size of Nuns’ Island, housed Montreal’s municipal tree nursery. The Bourque administration had decided before the election to put the land up for sale and move the tree nursery to land the federal government was offering in l’Assomption. (The city would sell the Terrebonne property in 2005, under Bourque’s successor, Gérald Tremblay.)
Visiting the Terrebonne land together by car, Fortier says Bail-largeon told him that only one potential buyer had expressed an interest and wasn’t going to offer enough.
Baillargeon went on to say he knew a Montreal developer who’d pay more, Fortier says. The developer was Robert Varin, whose firm Groupe St. Luc built housing in Montreal.
“In my mind, this was adding competitive pressure for an honest, fair-market value bid,” Fortier says. “That’s the reason why I went there, and to see also what a developer would do with it. Of course, today with lobbying laws, I would never do that.”
Quebec’s lobbyist registry didn’t exist at the time, and Fortier concedes his discussion with Bail-largeon wouldn’t be acceptable by today’s lobbying disclosure rules.
Fortier says Baillargeon told him Varin was parked nearby and ready to take him for a ride.
In Varin’s vehicle, Fortier says Varin told him: “You know, Jean, if you help me, I can help you.” Fortier adds that he told Varin he didn’t need help, and that he only wanted to attract competitive bids for the land.
Fortier says the conversation ended there.
A few days later, he says, Bail-largeon called his office and asked to meet with him across the street from city hall.
“He said, ‘You know that business of the nursery? There will be $100,000 for you if you help us’,” Fortier says Baillargeon told him.
Fortier insists he told Baillargeon he wasn’t interested.
Meanwhile, Fortier contends that during another meeting he learned that Varin also lobbied on behalf of a company linked to the Mafia.
Varin contacted him and asked to meet for lunch at a St. Laurent Blvd. restaurant in 2000, Fortier says. Varin wanted to discuss the city’s decision to award a pilot project to install outdoor garbage and recycling bins with lit advertising panels to Médiamar, he says. The company was owned by a Fortier acquaintance.
Fortier says the firm’s owner, Charles Amar, and he were members of the same gym. Amar, he says, had complained to him that he was being stonewalled by the civil servants handling the file in the city’s public works department to get his pilot project started.
Meanwhile, civil servants complained regularly to the executive committee that Amar’s firm was behind deadline.
The civil servants eventually recommended the contract be revoked and given to another firm, Toronto-based Olifas Marketing Group (OMG).
La Presse reported in 2002 that Vito Rizzuto, considered the boss of the Mafia in Montreal, drove a jeep registered to OMG. The newspaper also later revealed that his father, Nicolo Rizzuto, and some other family members had owned a stake in the company. Fortier says a Montreal lawyer made him aware of the links while he was still in office.
At the time, company founder Salvatore Oliveti denied any relationship with Rizzuto, and Rizzuto denied any connection to the company.
Ontario business registry records indicate the company has since been sold to new owners and operates under a new name, where a current representative said there is no link to the original company. Under federal business registration, the company is dissolved.
At his lunch with Varin, Fortier says the businessman tried to convince him not to hamper the transfer of the city contract to OMG when it came up for discussion at the executive committee.
Varin, he says, told him that his “group” was aware that Fortier had taken a $250,000 bribe on the contract with Médiamar.
Varin’s claim was untrue, Fortier contends.
“He (Varin) said, ‘You have a problem’,” Fortier says. “He said he wanted to help me. What does that mean? I wasn’t stupid enough to have got myself into trouble. … He took a chance and he said ‘We know that you’re corrupt, but we can help you’. If I had been the least corrupt, for a bottle of wine or whatever, I would have been dead. I would have had no choice but to say, ‘Okay, I’ll listen to you so you can help me. Please help me’. And we would have a deal together and be partners together.”
All these years later, Baillargeon denies Fortier’s allegations, saying he never offered a bribe. In fact, he says he also didn’t know the city was selling the Terrebonne tree nursery and never visited the property with Fortier.
“Frankly, I can’t believe it. I don’t even know what project you’re talking about,” Baillargeon says. “Tree nursery? That doesn’t mean anything to me. I never heard anyone talk about it. Never, never, never.”
Baillargeon says he doesn’t even know where Terrebonne is. “Terre-bonne. That’s in eastern Montreal?”
Baillargeon adds that he worked with Varin on a real-estate deal in Quebec City before Baillargeon moved to Montreal in the mid-1990s. Baillargeon has since returned to Quebec City.
Baillargeon says he was the real-estate broker who handled the sale of the Hotel Victoria in old Quebec to Robert Varin Inc., and Courtage Hypothécaire Summa Inc., a company belonging to Montreal businessman Michel Servant, in 1987.
“That’s how I knew Mr. Varin,” Baillargeon says. “I never did business with Mr. Varin as such. He was a guy I knew like that. We spoke again a few times when I arrived to Montreal. But not more than that.”
The city of Montreal later paid Baillargeon and Servant to work as consultants to negotiate and arrange the city’s purchase of an office building at 6767 Côte des Neiges Rd. in Fortier’s Darlington district to house a new municipal library in 2000.
Varin died in 2010. His son, Patrick, says his father would never have tried to develop a property in Terrebonne. The firm, which Patrick Varin has presided over for more than a decade, only builds in the city of Montreal, he said.
“I think his name is being dropped because he passed away,” Patrick Varin says.
“I think someone’s trying to get out of something and using his name. It’s a bit cheap.”
The company has never worked in Terrebonne, he added.
Patrick Varin also says he isn’t aware of a link between his father and OMG.
“We don’t do advertising and Robert wasn’t a person who used to work for people. He had his own businesses.”
He added he would have known about it because he was already working with his father at the time.
“I don’t know them,” Patrick Varin says, referring to the Rizzutos. Neither did his father, he added. “Not that I know of, but I didn’t know everybody that he knew.”
Meanwhile, the city hall opposition at the time frequently criticized Fortier, pointing to the propensity for his acquaintances to get lucrative contracts from the city.
Fortier, however, contends he didn’t help his friends.
But, he says, when it became clear his weakness wasn’t money, those trying to corrupt him tried to corner him through his friends and acquaintances.
Bernard Auger, another person introduced through an assistant to Fortier, says a developer approached him at a restaurant he frequented and offered him a “commission” if he could get Fortier to arrange a zoning change. Auger was working on a feasibility study for the city on developing the island’s green belt at the time.
“It would have given me money. I would have been happy. But Jean never wanted to embark on it,” Auger says.
“I was a bit frustrated. I remember he practically yelled at me. … I can see today that he was right.”
Fortier also claims he was told by executive committee member Paolo Tamburello to ask a businessman Fortier knew to contribute to their party, Vision Montreal, because the acquaintance had landed a lucrative contract to find a buyer for La Ronde. The city sold the amusement park to a U.S. firm in 2001.
Richard Bramucci’s company, Groupe Millenium, was paid $100,000 by the city to find a buyer for the amusement park. Bramucci also received an $888,000 commission on the sale. Bramucci and Fortier once shared an office.
Tamburello says he can’t remember asking anyone to get a contribution from anyone. “It wasn’t my job to collect (for the party),” Tam-burello says.
Bramucci says he doesn’t recall if anyone asked him to contribute to Vision Montreal. “They might have asked me for a contribution,” he says. “But I don’t recall who. And I never did contribute.”
The final straw, Fortier says, came the day the executive committee voted to award the garbage can contract to OMG in 2000. He’s told this part of his story to journalists before. On the morning of the meeting, Fortier says, he called for a closed session of the executive committee. The civil servants were asked to leave the room.
“I told the rest of the executive committee, ‘We’re about to award a contract to a company with links to the Mafia’,” Fortier says. “And they all started to laugh at me.”
“I said, ‘Fine, bring in the city clerk’. Motion approved. That’s when I quit, in my mind, from the city of Montreal.”
“They were out to corrupt me.”
lgyulai@montrealgazette.com
