MONTREAL - Montreal's auditor general Jacques Bergeron has fired a warning shot in the direction of four members of the city's administration.
Bergeron's attorney sent letters of demand Friday to the four city executives that they relinquish any and all documents they may have collected from his email inbox within 72 hours or else court proceedings will be undertaken.
The letters were sent to the city's comptroller Pierre Reid, auditing committee president André Harel, head of the investigations and analysis division Yves Grimard and computer security counselor Michel Nantel.
Bergeron sent a letter Tuesday to all city councillors, informing them city bureaucrats were snooping in his email account, and had been reading all correspondence, including private messages sent to and from his lawyers.
According to Bergeron, the investigators were reading emails from at least June 9, 2010 until Jan. 25, 2011, apparently in an attempt to find irregularities in how the Auditor General was conducting business.
"Systemic espionnage"
In the letter of demand sent Friday, Bergeron asserts that the four high-level city employees engaged in what amounts to "digital piracy and activities of systemic espionage."
"You must know that your actions were and continue to be not only completely illegal and unjustified under the circumstances, but also directly attacks the integrity, autonomy and independence that the position of auditor general requires in terms of the applicable laws," Bergeron's lawyer, Serge Amar, writes in the letter.
The letter goes on to state that the four men will be held "entirely responsible" for any damages Bergeron suffers as a result of their actions.
The letter demands that all documents gathered from Bergeron's inbox between March 2010 and January 2011 be returned to Bergeron within 72 hours, and also that he be told who else may have received either a copy or told of the contents of any of those documents.
Failure to do so, the letter continues, will trigger legal action.
Tremblay denies knowledge
Mayor Gerald Tremblay denied having any knowledge of the spying on Bergeron's e-mail account, saying the investigation was led by Reid without anyone in his administration being consulted.
The opposition Vision Montreal and Projet Montreal parties have called for Reid's resignation.
"It was under his authority that the interception of emails and the spying and the opening of attachments and legally privileged documentation was carried out," Projet Montreal councillor Alex Norris said Tuesday, adding that he doubts Tremblay knew nothing of the scheme.
Tremblay says a report on the e-mail spying will be delivered to city council next week.
Bergeron was chosen as auditor general for Montreal in May 2009, and immediately set to work digging up irregularities in city contracts.
In September 2009, he released a report on the $355 million water meter contract that highlighted cost overruns, poor oversight and an inadequate bidding process.
Later that year, his office launched a snitch line so that city staff and contractors could report possible ethics violations without fear of reprisal.
In 2010, the Tremblay administration yanked control of the ethics violation line away from the Auditor General and put it under the office of the city comptroller.
