Charbonneau turns focus to north shore

Retired engineer Roger Desbois told the commission about years of illegal financing of municipal politicians. Stephane Giroux reports.

The Charbonneau Commission has set its gaze on cities on the north shore, as retired engineer Roger Desbois continued to talk about his years of illegal financing of municipal politicians on the stand Wednesday.

Desbois is going into more depth and detail about the extent of corruption in Laval, but also named several other cities where engineers and contractors ran a similar systems of collecting contracts at an inflated price in exchange for illegal political donations.

He named:

Desbois testified that in 2005, Blainville mayoral hopeful Daniel Ratthé received an illegal boost from from Desbois’s Tecsult Engineering.

“I brought the money to Pierre Gingras, who handled the campaign for Ratthé,” he said. “He brought the money to his home -- an amount of $30,000.”

There is no proof Ratthe knew about the money, but the future PQ-turned-CAQ MNA was forced to step down Tuesday amidst these allegations.

Saint-Jerome Mayor Marc Gascon also allegedly received more than $65,000 through Desbois. He won his election; Desbois walked away with a multi-million-dollar water –filtration contract.

Earlier this week Desbois, who had a long career in private industry before working for the city of Laval, explained how contractors were tapped for kickbacks that went directly to Gilles Vaillancourt and his political party.

Desbois admitted that he, too, skimmed from contracts, reaping $400,000 in bribes, most of which he was forced to hand over to police in the past few months.

On Wednesday Desbois elaborated on the collusion system, saying it was not limited just to contractors working for the city. He said that engineering firms began conspiring amongst themselves following the enactment of Law 106.

Law 106 was created to force towns and cities to seek out multiple offers for any privately contracted work, instead of negotiating with a single firm, and then making a decision based on price and qualifications.

Desbois said that Tecsult, CIMA+, Dessau and MLC were very active in winning contracts in Laval, and he said the four companies, among others, set up a cartel in 2002 shortly after Law 106 was adopted.

According to Desbois, former Laval manager Claude Deguise played a major role in organizing the cartel, and picked which company would win each bid before the call for tenders was issued.