MONTREAL - The mayor of Montreal's borough of Lachine is making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Various media reports have linked Claude Dauphin with two associates of the Rizzuto crime family, namely Tony Magi and Michael Strizzi.
TVA reports it has a photograph of Dauphin in one of those meetings.
For his part, the borough mayor says any meetings were completely innocent.
"It could happen, you meet so many people, they don't have a sign on their front heads that they're a criminal or a presumed criminal," said Dauphin.
"But I've never heard of [Michael Strizzi], and I am not aware of that photo, and that's all I can tell you today."
Dauphin was the speaker of the City of Montreal at council meetings until he resigned last year, when he learned that comptroller general Pierre Reid had been intercepting his emails as part of an investigation.
He is now suing the city of Montreal in order to regain his position as speaker, and for $250,000 in costs and damages.
