City engineer admits he took kickbacks
Onetime city engineer Gilles Surprenant, aka “Mr. TPS”, admits he got $600,000 in kickbacks from construction firms, spent a quarter million at the casino and brought $122,800 back to police six weeks ago. What he’s saying confirms part of Lino Zambito’s testimony. Robert Abdallah continues to deny Zambito’s story that he too was in on the take.
david m 11:15 on 2012/10/19 Permalink
hard to believe surprenant received only ~600k when a relatively small player like zambito claims to have passed him ~200k. also, his casino story doesn’t sound right, like he actually testified that it was his small way of passing the ill-gotten funds back into the hands of the state, ha ha. his story of the corruption by frank catania sounds plausible, but it’s hard to square his “i was just caught up in something i couldn’t control” account with zambito’s matter-of-fact description of the situation, that if “you wanted to play ball in mtl, you payed the TPS.”
dwgs 11:35 on 2012/10/19 Permalink
I had a friend who was a blackjack dealer at the casino and he told me that it was the perfect way to launder money. Guys come in, buy $10,000 in chips, play small stakes for a little while and cash out. Apparently it was a very common practice. I laughed when Surprenant said he spent it at the casino because I figure I know exactly why.
walkerp 13:44 on 2012/10/19 Permalink
Oh this is all so good. I remember my dad telling me how blown away and happily surprised he was when it came out during the Watergate hearings that Nixon had recorded all of his conversations. I think this is kind of what he must have felt like, though on a smaller scale.