MONTREAL—A former City of Montreal director told the Charbonneau Commission on Thursday that the city has known about corruption for decades, but has done very little to stop it.

Serge Pourreaux told the commission that the City of Montreal ordered reports in 1992 and 1997 that confirmed that only certain contractors were able to bid on municipal projects, and that contractors outside the fold who dared to make bids were subject to threats and intimidation.

“We knew that we should open the market to have better competition and lower prices,” said Pourreaux. “There was a real economic potential.”

In 2004, Pourreaux hired four engineers to produce a report to find out why costs in the City of Montreal were 35 to 50 percent higher than they should be. Those engineers were often told the same thing: Outside companies were threatened if they made bids.

The report also fingered the city's public works department as a "kingdom within a kingdom" with 120 engineers who saw themselves as an elite. That same department oversaw cost overruns and runaway spending that sometimes exceeded 50 per cent of an allotted budget.

Pourreaux continued his testimony saying he was worried the report would be buried and ignored, even though it could save Montreal $50 million.

That report was presented to the city's Executive Committee, which promptly ignored its recommendations.

In fact the report was buried so effectively that within the past few months, current members of the Executive Committee said they were unaware it existed. Pourreaux challenged former Mayor Gerald Tremblay’s claim that he never saw the report, arguing that it was presented several times.

After the report was tabled, Pourreaux was transferred to another borough, his boss was given another job and City of Montreal general manager Robert Abdallah, who was supposed to implement the report's recommendations, was asked to resign.

Pourreaux said he could only come to one conclusion: members of the Executive Committee deliberately decided to let collusion continue.

"I and others like me thought it was a putsch. As the project could not be stopped, so they pushed aside the three people in charge," testified Pourreaux.

According to Pourreaux, Abadallah was a backer of his efforts to stamp out collusion.

Who could have led such a putsch?

“Not that many people had the power to toss aside the general manager, there were two: the mayor and the president of the Executive Committee.”

Pourreaux told the anti-corruption commission that the mayor cared about his report, he concluded that Frank Zampino was responsible for halting any reform against collusion. Soon after that episode, the city hired Claude Leger as a new general manager. Leger quickly understood that the real power was in the hands of Zampino.

“The head of the public service is the president of the Executive Committee, at that time it was Frank Zampino,” said Leger.

Leger says he chose to accept direct orders from Zampino and Mayor Tremblay, but he would meet his own downfall in 2009 when another scandal hit city hall: a $350 million water-meter project.