Pagliarulo takes the stand at Quebec’s corruption inquiry and fingers former municipal official

MONTREAL – The latest witness at the Charbonneau Commission has pointed the finger directly at the former head of Montreal’s executive committee, Frank Zampino, alleging that Zampino was “corrupted” by construction bosses attempting to cheat the system for awarding public contracts. 

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The bombshell
Just before the commission took its morning break, Élio Pagliarulo – the former head of a successful pastry business in Montreal – dropped a major bombshell.

He testified that his one-time close friend, construction boss Paolo Catania, told him that Zampino cooperated with a cartel of about a dozen companies who were fixing their bids on contracts and paying kickbacks to the mob.

Zampino left city hall in 2008 and is currently facing several charges in connection with an alleged bid-rigging scheme on a contract in Montreal’s east end.
 

Pagliarulo did not have a chance to elaborate before Justice France Charbonneau called the morning recess.

A friendship gone bad
The statement was the culmination of 90 minutes of stunning and sometimes chilling testimony from Pagliarulo, who described how he was allegedly intimidated, bullied and ultimately put in hospital by the Catania family – men he had once considered his closest friends.

Pagliarulo alleged that he and the younger Catania – Paolo – became extremely close in the 1990s, eventually leading to an equally close relationship with the elder Catania, Frank.

“We were the dearest friends,” said Pagliarulo of the kinship between the two families.

“We would share dinners, parties, holidays, Christmas, New Year’s, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, our kids’ birthday parties.”

Pagliarulo described how the friendship eventually led to the birth of an illegal loan-sharking business with Paolo and his father in the late 1990s. At its peak, he said, the “business” had handed out over $5 million to various people.

A few of those people never paid back their loans, however, and Pagliarulo alleged that the Catanias blamed him.

“I was told that the loan had to get paid, or else. And I didn’t want to find out about the ‘or else,’” he testified, specifying that he found himself owing the Catanias about $1.5 million. “The Catanias don’t lose money.”

Alleged violence from Catania
The threats, he said, began in mid-2008 and continued into 2009. At one point, Pagliarulo said he was kidnapped, thrown into the back of a van a brutally beaten by two men who released him after three hours.

“They told me I had to pay the money and soon,” he said. “They blindfolded and beat me and three hours later I went back into my car.”

The injuries to his face were so severe, said Pagliarulo, that “you couldn’t really see who I was anymore.”

A broken nose, swollen eye, broken teeth and broken facial bones landed him in hospital for over a month.

The same week he was allegedly beaten, Pagliarulo said floral arrangements designed for a funeral were deposited on the front lawn of his home.

He knew what that meant, he told the commissioners.

“It meant pay up or you’re dead,” he said

Pagliarulo went to the police, and Paolo Catania was eventually charged with extortion. But all charges were eventually dropped in 2010 due to lack of evidence.

Pagliarulo’s relationship with the Catania family would never be the same, he said.

Montreal mafia
During the time they were still friends, however, Pagliarulo testified that he heard the younger Catania speak at length about the mob’s connections to the construction business in Montreal. Catania allegedly told Pagliarulo that his company, F. Catania & Associates, was winning precisely 22 per cent of public works contracts, with other companies in the cartel accepting lower “shares.”

The mob took 5 per cent off the top of every contract, Pagliarulo alleged, a statement that seemed to contradict the testimony of previous witnesses, who put the amount going to Montreal’s Rizzuto clan at just 2.5 per cent.