The former mayor of Terrebonne, Jean-Marc Robitaille, is released from the charges against him.
Judge Nancy McKenna ordered, Monday at the Saint-Jérôme courthouse, the stay of proceedings against Mr. Robitaille and three co-defendants in a case of corruption and breach of trust that had dragged on for more than three years .
The former chief of staff of Mayor Robitaille, Daniel Bélec, the former deputy director general of Terrebonne, Luc Papillon, and the entrepreneur Normand Trudel were also before the court in this case. The four defendants had been apprehended by the Permanent Anti-Corruption Unit in March 2018. A fifth suspect, engineer Jean Leroux, had also been apprehended, but he died in the meantime.
McKenna J. found that the prosecution had violated the rules of procedure by not disclosing or too late in disclosing certain evidence on the record that could have served the defense.
The Crown sought to demonstrate that Mayor Robitaille had implemented a contract sharing scheme between certain engineering firms. The Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions also intended to prove that Mr. Robitaille, in charge of Terrebonne from 1997 to 2016, had greatly benefited from this arrangement.
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