MONTREAL – Frank Zampino may have gone to a lot of weddings when he was mayor of St-Leonard, including the nuptials between the children of former crime boss Frank Cotroni and former mob strongman Joey Di Maulo. He may have taken campaign money from Di Maulo’s son, Jimmy. But please, don’t say he had connections with the Montreal Mafia.
“If you’ve got proof, a document, maybe, show it to me,” Zampino told Charbonneau Commission prosecutor Sonia LeBel, when she grilled him over the donation. Outside of that, he said he had no recollection.
The head of Montreal’s executive committee from 2001 to 2008 was repeatedly taken to account over possible connections to the mob. Over the better part of a day Zampino denied, demurred or said he had no knowledge or memory. A typical exchange of testimony that was entirely in French looked something like this:
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LeBel: “You are aware that Mr. (Joey) Di Maulo, during that era, was a member of the Mafia?”
Frank Zampino: “I had no idea.”
When LeBel asked him about attending a Cotroni wedding, Zampino responded that as mayor he attended a lot of weddings, and added he was offended at any insinuations she was making.
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Before being arrested last year in an alleged kickback scheme, Zampino was the city’s number two official, a fact political rivals seized on at Wednesday’s hearing.
“We heard it two weeks ago: this man was the real boss of Montreal, the strongman, said Richard Bergeron, the head of Projet Montreal and a mayoral candidate.
Zampino denied this in testimony that veered from banal minutiae to the name-dropping of major players in the city’s criminal underworld like Di Maulo, who was found dead last year in a gangland-style execution. As for Zampino, he was arrested last year and charged with a kickback scheme involving the construction firm of Paolo Catania.
Zampino’s testimony will continue Thursday.
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