Damning

"Mr. Cadotte, things are going well, it's rolling.  There's just one thing that you need to know.  Because of the acceptance of your product by the city of Montreal, I've got some people to compensate."
Nicolo Milioto, Mivela Construction Inc.

Well, wasn't Michel Cadotte, sales director for Montreal-based Ipex Inc. surprised.  That had happened to him once before; that he had been asked for a kickback.  And when it occurred ten years earlier when he was informed that Ipex could be guaranteed a municipal contract in the Laurentians if it paid the requested bribe, his company turned the offer down.

"We don't get involved in projects where we make profits on the back of taxpayers", he informed the Charbonneau Commission.  On this later occasion, Mr. Milioto, a major stakeholder in the Montreal construction industry, was asking for $150,000 in cash.  Payment for three city of Montreal officials "who did the work to get us here".

Getting them there was the result of Mr. Cadotte complaining to the head of Montreal's public works division about substandard pipe he witnessed being installed at a site.  After which he was invited to meet Mr. Milioto.  Who was impressed by the pipes produced by Mr. Cadotte's Company, Ipex Inc.  "I got the impression he had ties with the city of Montreal", explained Mr. Cadotte.

Robert Marcil, Montreal's public works chief, issued a memo a month later to the effect that henceforth as a result of "quality problems" with the cast-iron pipe used as the norm, new projects would use an Ipex product called TerraBrute or its equivalent.  Ipex, hearing the news, sped up production to meet expected orders valued at roughly $800,000.

And that's when the meeting took place between Mr. Cadotte and Mr. Milioto.  And when Mr. Cadotte informed Mr. Milioto, after conferring with Ipex head office that "Ipex doesn't work that way", things ran downhill.  "If we don't get on board, if we don't give the money, we know that's the end", he testified.

And sure enough, it was.  Ipex has never since that time in 2006 been selected to provide pipe for Montreal aqueduct projects.  It does sell its products, however, to municipalities across eastern Canada.  A memo went out from Mr. Marcil to his engineers in 2007, reversing the earlier edict, to declare that TerraBrute would after all not be considered for city projects.

Mr. Milioto, the commission heard, acted as middle man between colluding construction companies and the Rizzuto crime family.  The RCMP recorded him having entered a well-known Rizzuto hangout no fewer than 236 times over a two-year period.  They recorded film showing him receiving stacks of cash from various contractors, turned over to Mafia bosses.