Tony Accurso has reached an agreement in principle with the City of Montreal under which the contractor will pay the latter $3.8 million.
The executive committee ratified the agreement in principle reached between the two parties behind closed doors on Wednesday, but on Friday morning, the office of mayor Valérie Plante did not want to reveal the details of the agreement.
Remember that in the wake of the report of the Charbonneau commission tabled in November 2015, the City of Montreal went to court to try to recover the money from the collusion.
In September 2018, she filed a $ 14 million lawsuit against 14 companies and individuals she held responsible for the fraud she allegedly suffered in relation to the water meter contract. Among them were the entrepreneurs Tony Accurso and Paolo Catania, as well as the ex-president of the executive committee, Frank Zampino.
Then, a year later, the City filed a $26 million lawsuit against Tony Accurso and Frank Zampino. This time, the dispute concerned their alleged participation in a system of rigging contracts on the occasion of sewer, aqueduct, asphalt and sidewalk works.
The Press, which reported on Friday the existence of an agreement in principle between the contractor and the City of Montreal, also indicated that Tony Accurso would also have concluded an agreement with the City of Laval in order to settle their disputes. Recall that the latter had filed a lawsuit of 29 million in 2019 against Tony Accurso and the former director of the Engineering Department of Laval, Claude de Guise, accusing them of having taken advantage of the collusive scheme from 1996 to 2010.
In June 2018, Tony Accurso was found guilty of having participated in the system of corruption and collusion that raged in Laval under the reign of ex-mayor Gilles Vaillancourt. The contractor and four co-defendants had, however, benefited last year from a stay of proceedings in the dispute between them and Revenue Canada.
In 2020, Tony Accurso and four companies with which he was associated were also ordered to pay $ 4.2 million in fines for tax evasion against Revenu Québec after pleading guilty.
Further details will follow.