The city of Laval, Que., says it has been able to recover $60 million it lost due to corruption and collusion.
In an announcement Tuesday, Mayor Stéphane Boyer said the city is closing a dark chapter in its history. He symbolically put papers in a shredder to illustrate the point.
“We’re here today to make a conclusion to everything that happened in Laval towards corruption when Gilles Vaillancourt was in power,” said Boyer. “All that money was stolen from our citizens.”
To get the money back, it took nearly a decade of work by a dedicated task force of eight people, made up of ex-police officers, economists, statisticians and more.
In 2016, longtime mayor Gilles Vaillancourt was sentenced to six years behind bars for his role in a criminal conspiracy to award city contracts to companies in exchange for bribes. He got out on parole after two. Laval says Vaillancourt returned nearly $10 million.
The city managed to get its hands on his luxury condo on Ile Paton and cash from accounts in Switzerland and Bermuda. Laval couldn’t get the Florida condo, however, saying that one is in his wife’s name.
Mayor Boyer was asked about the people who still admire Vaillancourt.
“There’s people that admire Trump. What can I do about it?” he said.
Laval says it pursued dozens of entities, many of them construction companies.
“We sued roughly 30 or 35 entities, and we settled with two thirds of them,” said the head of Laval’s legal department, Simon Tremblay.
The biggest chunk of cash came from companies owned by convicted construction magnate Tony Accurso.
“The people involved in this group, they reimbursed the city more than $12 million,” Tremblay explained.
Tremblay said he once went to pick up a $7-million cheque and gave it straight to a city services desk.
Laval says the recuperated money has gone toward a children’s charity, green spaces, and other community initiatives.
“Now we want to move forward,” said Boyer.
Opposition city councillor Paolo Galati said the money should have gone toward giving Laval citizens a tax break instead.
“You’re saying that you recuperated $60 million, that’s fantastic. However, what you’re going to be doing with the $60 million is important,” he said.
The eight person recovery task force began its work in the wake of the Charbonneau Commission into construction contract corruption in the province. The team is now being disbanded. The city is left to wonder just how much dirty money it could not recover.
“We’re never going to know,” said Tremblay. He said once, soon after starting in the Laval legal department, a company offered him box seats at a Habs game. He declined and made sure their contract was cancelled.
“I said, ‘Are you kidding me?'” he recalled.
There are still five civil lawsuits pending, and the city said it could get up to $20 million more back.
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