Former president of the City of Montreal Executive Committee Frank Zampino, who is accused of corruption in a case of awarding municipal contracts in exchange for political funding, must finally be brought to justice.
Posted at 4:13 p.m.
The appeals court ordered the trial to be held on Friday after the city’s former number two and his five co-defendants obtained a stay of proceedings against them in 2019.
The former right-hand man of Mayor Gérald Tremblay was arrested in 2017 as part of Operation Fronde. But Justice Joëlle Roy of the Quebec court confirmed that Mr. Zampino’s constitutional rights had been violated during the investigation, particularly by issuing a wiretap warrant that targeted conversations between him and his lawyer.
Judge Roy declared invalid all evidence obtained using this technique by Permanent Anti-Corruption Unit (UPAC) investigators.
The end of the trial also affected the five co-defendants Frank Zampino, Bernard Poulin and Dany Moreau from the SM company, Kazimierz Olechnowicz from CIMA+, Normand Brousseau from HBA Teknika and Robert Marcil, former director of infrastructure and roads in the city of Montreal. The appeals court also reversed the decision in her case.
All were accused of fraud, conspiracy and corruption in a scheme to award municipal contracts to engineering firms in exchange for payments into the coffers of the Union Montréal, then headed by Gérald Tremblay.
According to the appeal court, even if the police officers had acted negligently during the wiretapping, these actions were not of a serious nature that would justify a stay of the proceedings.
“As a remedy, the court instead orders the exclusion of the evidence from the wiretap. “It annuls the first instance judgments and orders the holding of a trial,” said the summary of the decision by judges Manon Savard, François Doyon and Patrick Healy of the Court of Appeal.
More details to follow.