MONTREAL -- Just days before Montrealers go to the polls, frontrunner Denis Coderre has had to drop a candidate amid bribery allegations.
Former Union Montreal member Robert L. Zambito, who was running in the borough of St. Leonard, has been booted from Coderre’s party after it was reported Tuesday that in 2010, Zampito on two occasions offered a bribe to a fellow candidate.
It’s alleged that Zambito, who was then a councillor with former mayor Gerald Tremblay's Union Montreal, offered money to fellow councillor Bernard Blanchet as a bribe to get a good price on a piece of land in the city.
Blanchet said he refused and apparently filed a police report about the incident.
The incident was kept in the dark until Tuesday, when the incident arose again due to an investigative report.
"Mr. Robert L. Zambito maintains that he is innocent, but we cannot tolerate even the slightest hint of questionable behavior when it comes to integrity," said Coderre in a statement.
Zampito was forced to immediately withdraw his candidacy in St. Leonard and all connections with the party.
The statement added that at the time of his recruitment, Zambito, like other candidates for the team, filled out an exhaustive questionnaire and was vetted and at that point, there appeared to be no irregularities
Projet Montreal leader Richard Bergeron argued, however, that this just proves that Coderre's team -- which still has 24 councillors from the old Union Montreal party -- is just not to be trusted.
"Denis Coderre is so proud to say day after day that he has a filter against corruption. What we learned today is that his filter has a big hole in the middle of it, because Robert Zambito has been forced today to resign as a candidate of Denis Coderre. It's the second scandal in the last 30 days," he said.
Meantime, mayoral candidate Melanie Joly also said that Coderre doesn't have the credibility to tackle the corruption issue in Montreal, given that he decided months ago to recruit ex-members of Union Montreal, despite the fact there had been raids in the St. Leonard borough offices.
Joly also had to ask a candidate to step down just last week due to a vetting issue, but she said that was different a different case.
"I'd rather have made a mistake over the fact that I didn't know enough about the past of my candidate, rather than really recruiting a candidate than everybody knew about," she said.
Press_Release_Equipe-Denis-Coderre ENG.pdf
