Former UPAC anti-corruption chief Jacques Duchesneau is denying a report that he accepted a $250,000 campaign donation from Tony Accurso.

Accurso testified at the Charbonneau Commission Friday that he gave the cash to fund a campaign debt run by up Duchesneau's 1998 mayoral bid.

“At the time he's talking about the debt was paid," Duchesneau told Benoit Dutrizac of CHMP-FM 98.5 Radio. "So if Accurso is giving money to people thinking it's going to me, either he's an imbecile or he's a liar. Maybe he's both.”

Duchesneau allegedly needed the money to pay off a mortgage that he took on his home to finance his 1998 mayoral bid, which saw him come in second place behind Pierre Bourque.

Accurso said that someone named Richard, who was in Duchesneau's entourage, approached him to arrange a meeting with Duchesneau.

Accurso said that he gave a cheque to the company owned by the man named Richard in return for a promise that Duchesneau would help him in whatever future post he was to take. 

Accurso was asked for proof of the claim but said that he could not supply any.

The commission recessed soon after the revelation.

The claim came as a surprise because Duchesneau is a high-profile anti-corruption crusader, whose work with the UPAC squad has been instrumental in the very hearings that have Accurso on the hotseat.

Duchesneau also served as MNA for the CAQ in St. Jerome for 18 months but chose not to run again in the recent provincial election. His former seat is now held by the Parti Quebecois' Pierre Karl Peladeau.

Up until then Tony Accurso had continued his customary deflections and folksiness, minimizing his connection with politicians who he said he contributed to out of fear.

“My father told me never to ask a politician to help you. Ask him to not get in your way,” he said when asked about his links with politicians.

Accurso said that’s why he – along with his employees, who were mostly reimbursed afterwards – donated $748,000 to all provincial parties: as a way to keep the elected officials from interfering with his business.

The Liberals received $556,000 of that total, an imbalance which he theorized might have prejudiced the short-lived Parti Quebecois minority government against him.

More wiretaps were then played, one which featured Accurso saying of former Premier Jean Charest, “Charest holds a grudge, if you attack him, he’ll remember for a long time.”

Accurso said that he does not know Charest personally and the former premier is not among the over 3,000 acquaintances on his iPhone contact list.

He noted that they had a dinner downtown one on occasion, however, as Charest - before becoming premier - was interested in knowing how the FTQ worked.

Accurso denied outright a comment heard on a wiretap that stated that he had been blocked from getting public contracts for some time but was reinstated in 2003 when Charest was in power.

Earlier Friday, a lawyer for the Parti Quebecois intervened to deny a claim that Accurso that then-Premier Pauline Marois personally ordered that Accurso no longer be considered for government contracts. Justce Charbonneau responded that the PQ's lawyer Estelle Trudeau would eventually get an opportunity to cross-examine Accurso.