Businessman Jean-Charles Legault, who for years illegally buried residue on now-contaminated agricultural land in the Laurentians, transferred his business to a resident of Guatemala using the address of a motel in Ontario. A possibly “orchestrated” transaction […] so as to avoid the consequences of a judgment” which would force him to clean up the site.
“Why would I clean the site? It doesn’t belong to me,” says Jean-Charles Legault. The farmer from Saint-Joseph-du-Lac, near Oka, was condemned several times by the Ministry of the Environment for discharging residual materials on 10 hectares of agricultural land. He never complied with the injunction from Quebec which ordered him to clean up the agricultural land.
To meet Mr. Legault, THE Duty went to the heavy equipment repair garage where he works, located near the contaminated farmland. “It’s up to the Ministry of the Environment to sort that out,” he says about this agricultural land where piles of scrap metal, mounds of residual materials, an old concrete truck tipper and only around forty rusty barrels containing substances that cannot be identified.
At the same time, he confirms having “sold” the company that owns the contaminated land. In June 2022, Jean-Charles Legault in fact sold his business – without informing the Quebec authorities – to a resident of Guatemala: a man named Marcos Lopez Mendez. In the company register, the latter is presented as the president and largest shareholder of the company.
An investigation by the Commission for the Protection of Agricultural Territory of Quebec (CPTAQ) recently discovered that the transfer of ownership forms provided by Mr. Legault presented the new owner, Mr. Mendez, as a Canadian resident who resided in Niagara Falls, in Ontario.
However, it is not. This address turned out to be that of a hotel in the Days Inn chain, where Mr. Mendez would never have stayed. Communications obtained by the CPTAQ confirmed that the new owner “resides in Guatemala” and that he “does not have a visa” to come to Canada to represent the company as part of the lawsuit initiated by the Ministry of Environment.
The CPTAQ is now trying to invalidate the transaction, recalling that the transfer of agricultural land to a “non-resident” must necessarily receive the green light. In an order from the Commission, Mr. Legault has until February 2024 to comply, failing which the CPTAQ will contact the Superior Court “to obtain authorization to sell the lot under court supervision”.
The transfer of the company to a resident of Guatemala “could have been orchestrated by Mr. Jean-Charles Legault in order to avoid the consequences of a possible judgment rendered against his company,” we read in the CPTAQ order. .
This hypothesis, notes the CPTAQ, “would have the merit of explaining the prevarications on possible places of residence of Mr. Mendez, in Quebec or in Ontario, or that Mr. Legault would have used the addresses for the sole purpose of completing the forms of change of ownership “.
When encountered by The duty, Mr. Legault stated that he had not yet received the order from the CPTAQ. He believes that he is not obliged to inform anyone of such a transaction: “Why would I inform the CPTAQ? Even if it were a foreign resident… It doesn’t concern me. »
“Me, it’s a guy to whom we sold, and that’s it ! » he said, specifying that he did not know Mr. Mendez “as such”.
Many transactions
For almost a year, Mr. Legault has increased the number of transfers and creations of businesses registered on the land of Saint-Joseph-du-Lac, noted The duty. In the fall of 2022, he transferred a numbered company to a man named Gustavo Armando Arguello Sanchez. The new owner has two addresses on official federal forms: one in Mexico and the other is a motel in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
More recently, last spring, Mr. Legault registered three new numbered companies on the agricultural land of Saint-Joseph-du-Lac. The director of one of his companies, Miguel Garcia, resides in a motel in North Bay, Ontario, according to federal forms.
A heavy past
Since 2016, the Ministry of the Environment has carried out around 50 inspections at the site, which belongs to the recently sold company. In 2020, Mr. Legault and his company were ordered to pay nearly $43,000 for dumping residual materials. Seven administrative sanctions totaling $39,500 were added during the same period.
The Ministry of the Environment also obtained a permanent injunction from the Superior Court in 2021 which orders Mr. Legault to stop bringing in new residual materials and rehabilitate the site.
“Since to date, the injunction has still not been respected, the ministry has undertaken work to rehabilitate the site in May 2022 and intends to take the required actions to claim the costs incurred,” the ministry indicated by email of the Environment, which says it is closely monitoring this matter: “No recourse is excluded. »
The CPTAQ did not want to comment on the matter, and also maintains that it has taken steps to ensure that the agricultural land once again belongs to Quebec interests.