The Quebec Court of Appeal has ordered three executives with a construction company to begin serving time behind bars for having defrauded municipalities out of millions of dollars by obtaining municipal contracts through collusion.
In a decision delivered on Friday, the appellate court agreed with the Crown’s argument that Quebec Court Judge Stéphane Godri, went too easy on the three men — including Pasquale Fedele, the president of CIV-BEC — by sentencing them earlier this year to prison terms they could serve in the community.
The decision came with an order that Fedele, 54, of Brossard, report to a federal penitentiary within 96 hours to begin serving a three-year prison term. Two men who were vice-presidents with CIV-BEC when the frauds were committed — Jacques Lavoie, 64, of Berthierville, and Patrick Alain, 40, of St-Constant — were ordered to report to provincial detention centres, also within 96 hours, because the Quebec Court of Appeal determined that they should serve prison terms of under two years.
The decision might have come as a shock to Fedele because, on May 2, he was acquitted, along with Frank Zampino, 59, the former No. 2 politician at Montreal city hall, in a different criminal case heard at the Montreal courthouse that involved the controversial Contrecoeur land deal.
The Quebec Court of Appeal rejected the Crown’s request that a fourth man, Jules César Badra, 55, of Pierrefonds, also serve time for having taken part in some of Fedele’s fraud schemes.
Last year, in a trial heard at a courthouse in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, all four men were convicted of fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, fabricating false documents and other related charges. In March, they received sentences, ranging between 18 and 24 months, that all four men could serve in the community.
The charges involved six contracts in all, including one to repair sewers and resurface Courville St. in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu. The project was initially estimated at $765,000 but CIV-BEC ended up being paid more than $1.1 million as part of a conspiracy to collude during the bidding process. The other five contracts involved similar work done on three other projects in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu as well as Lacolle and Carignan.
The Crown had requested that Fedele receive at least a 36-month prison term and sought roughly two-year prison terms for the other three men. Godri disagreed that the crimes merited jail time because he felt their case did not compare to other high-profile cases (such as those in Laval) involving the awarding of public contracts because there was no evidence presented at trial that elected officials or civil servants had been corrupted. Godri felt that, because the St-Jean-sur-Richelieu case did not involve breach of trust, the need to prioritize dissuasion and denunciation as factors in the sentences was lessened.
For example, in Fedele’s case, Godri agreed his crimes would have merited a prison term of 18 months but ultimately decided that, because no municipal officials had been corrupted, the company president should receive an overall sentence of two years less a day that Fedele could serve in the community.
The three appeal court judges, who heard arguments on the sentences in September, were unanimous in their opinion that Godri erred by placing too much emphasis on this point, among other things. Their decision was written by Justice Patrick Healy.
While explaining why Fedele and the other two men should have been sentenced to prison terms Healy highlighted the subjective severity of the offences and noted “the fraud (offences) were spread out over two years, were planned and were part of a concerted stratagem.” The judge also noted that the two most expensive contracts alone were worth $14 million.
Lavoie was sentenced to a prison term of two years less a day and Alain was sentenced to an 18-month prison term.
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