Girard Anglade, early accomplice of Frédérick Silva, the former hitman currently at the center of a major investigation into organized crime in Montreal, pleaded guilty on Friday morning to a conspiracy aimed at helping the killer evade justice to help.
Posted at 11:26 am.
Judge André Vincent of the Supreme Court supported a joint proposal from the prosecution and defense and sentenced Anglade to 37 months in prison.
However, if one takes into account the total length of preventive detention of 37 months, Anglade was released on the same day.
The 46-year-old was scheduled to face a jury trial starting Monday on charges of conspiracy and helping Silva obtain a passport, but Judge Vincent ordered jury selection to be canceled.
At the request of the public prosecutor, represented by Me Nathalie Kléber from the Serious Crime and Special Affairs Office, Judge Vincent ordered a stay of proceedings on the charge of obtaining a false passport.
Spy phone
Frédérick Silva shot and killed a customer at a Montreal strip bar in May 2017 after a conflict broke out between the killer's friends and the victim's friends.
The following June, investigators and members of the tactical intervention group narrowly missed Silva, who had been visiting a cinema in Laval.
Immediately following this failed operation, a pan-Canadian arrest warrant was issued for Frédérick Silva, who then found himself at the center of a nearly two-year escape before being arrested by SPVM police officers in February 2019.
Two years earlier, in February 2017, Silva also tried to kill mafia clan boss Salvatore Scoppa.
According to a summary of facts read in court by Anglade's lawyer, Me Debora De Thomasis, Anglade was among a group of friends who accompanied Silva when the latter attempted to kill Scoppa, but he said he had no intentions before the commission of the crime.
In August 2017, when the SPVM had launched an extensive investigation called Mégalo to find Silva, a police double agent posing as a criminal approached the killer's partner and gave him a bouquet of flowers and a cell phone for Silva to call him could get him back.
The cell phone was actually a spy phone and the police hoped to use it to track down Silva.
But Anglade threw away the flowers, called back the man who had given the device to Silva's partner, said that he was no longer in touch with him and that he would never give him the phone.
Subsequently, Anglade took certain steps and communications to enable Silva to obtain a false passport in the name of one David Guérard.
Long roadmap
Anglade has been in prison for six years following his conviction for firing a firearm in the attempted murder of motorcyclist Jean-Guy Bourgouin as he left a restaurant in the Saint-Léonard district in January 2018.
In January 2022, he was charged with conspiracy and obtaining a false passport. A new preventive detention period then began, which prevented him from leaving prison between the two cases.
Anglade has a history dating back to 1998. These include assault, burglary, robbery with a firearm, robbery with a firearm and possession of a firearm. He repeatedly violated orders prohibiting him from owning a weapon.
The names Anglade and Silva first appeared together in a Canadian Press article about a home invasion crime committed nearly 20 years ago.
“I hope for your sake that this is the last sentence and that it ends,” Judge Vincent told him before wishing him good luck.
To contact Daniel Renaud, call 514 285-7000, extension 4918, write to [email protected] or write to La Presse's mailing address.