Mayor’s party skimmed 3%: Zambito
Lino Zambito is continuing his testimony at the Charbonneau Commission on Monday, leading with the outright allegation that after 2005, 3% of every contract was given directly to Union Montreal. The mayor’s expected to respond just about now.
david m 14:04 on 2012/10/01 Permalink
hoohoo! this is really cooking. i watched that last news conference of his, when he was all angrily denouncing the cops for not forwarding the information on to him, so that he could do something about it. just seemed transparently false given everything that has come out over the years.
as an aside: i hate to say it, but virtually every single one of these crooks so far has an italian name. not to say that we could benefit from some racial profiling, but there does seem to be a trend.
Dave M 14:20 on 2012/10/01 Permalink
“Tremblay” is an Italian name?
walkerp 15:06 on 2012/10/01 Permalink
The Italian names are all on the construction side, but we are seeing more and more Quebec/French names when we start getting into the city hall side of things. I’m sure by the end of it we will get a nice reflection of Montreal and Quebec demographics. Corruption knows no racial boundaries!
Oh man, I am loving this. Let’s keep shaking this rotting tree.
david m 17:50 on 2012/10/01 Permalink
i stand by my “all italians are crooks” line.
anyway, zambito (what a name straight out of a scorcese flick) wasn’t even done today, he also directly tied accurso to vito rizzuto.
denpanosekai 18:16 on 2012/10/01 Permalink
I’m just wondering — does this Zambito dude not fear for his life at this point? What kind of protection is provided in return for this name-dropping extravaganza?
Singlestar 19:03 on 2012/10/01 Permalink
As for possible danger to Zambito, La Presse ran a story on this the other day.
http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/dossiers/commission-charbonneau/201209/29/01-4578829-zambito-ne-serait-pas-en-danger-selon-des-experts.php?
Kate 19:41 on 2012/10/01 Permalink
Thanks for that response, Singlestar. I had wondered the same as denpanosekai – but regardless of that article, Zambito’s got to have balls of steel if he isn’t checking under his bed at night.
david m, all italians are not crooks, and your saying so hedges pretty close to my blog policy of not welcoming racist commentary. This city’s full of fine decent folks of Italian heritage who are flinching every time a Rizzuto or Accurso gets mentioned in the news.
Ian 21:49 on 2012/10/01 Permalink
Because heaven knows no French or Irish or English or Jamaicans or Haitians or Arabs or Greeks or Jews ever had big organized crime syndicates in Montreal in deep with city officials. Oh wait. Corruption is equal opportunity, for better or for worse. That the Calabrese and Sicilian mobs control construction is only a drop in the bucket, and that’s completely ignoring the biker involvement in smuggling and other forms of materials acquisition for the construction industry, not to mention all the cross-border shenanigans an corruption that involves. What I’d like to see is a bit of exposure on how deep the cops were in on it, too – and not just city cops, but SQ & RCMP. I would be more surprised to hear about a stratum of officialdom that’s not widely on the take than to hear about who is. This goes all the way to the top.
david m 00:07 on 2012/10/02 Permalink
kate, i was slyly rejoinding (is that a word?) in re the implication of what the dave type was suggesting. obviously, it would be idiotic to say that italians are crooks. but it is funny to riff on the mafiosi stereotypes.