Ms. Gaudreault is the spouse of the lender Alain Cormier, president of the alternative loan firm Bancan. Research in Alain Cormier's business relations allowed us to discover the following:
Over the years, Martine Gaudreault also had business ties with her husband. They have been involved together in three companies since 2012.
In April 2012, she became the sole shareholder of a company that had been created by her husband and entrepreneur Gary Iacobaccio.
The latter has a criminal past and has been in business with Giuseppe Focarazzo, a man related to the Rizzuto clan.
Then, in June 2014, Gaudreault and Cormier both become involved in two numbered companies that will be used to purchase buildings totaling $ 3.2 million.
According to the Register of Personal and Movable Real Rights (RPMRR), Alain Cormier also donated $ 100,000 to Ms. Gaudreault, who allowed her to acquire a house in Laval, which she is still owner. The residence, paid $ 340,000 in 2001, is now valued at nearly $ 1 million.
Donald Riendeau, Ethics Specialist and Director of the Institute of Trust in Organizations, considers these facts "extremely worrying".
"Ms. Gaudreault occupies extremely important functions. It raises important questions about conflicts of interest and the protection of savers' assets, "he says.
"I do not have to talk to you as a journalist," said Martine Gaudreault yesterday, attached to the phone.
The Vice President said she did not know "absolutely" Gary Iacobaccio.
"I have nothing to say," she repeated three times before ending the conversation.
His spouse Alain Cormier stated that Martine Gaudreault was not aware of her business ties.
"My girlfriend knows nothing about that," he said when we joined him yesterday morning.
"My spouse manages her life, I manage my life! That I made funding ten years ago ... It's the most honest person, the straightest person I know in my life. You know what you are going to do. You're going to mess up everything, "he said.
Here is what he had to say about:
His business connections with mafia-related or criminal-sentenced individuals:
"I have nothing to do with this milieu: I am a financier, I lend money, I do real estate."
His involvement in a condo project in the LaSalle borough, where he jointly invested with a company controlled by the Rizzuto family:
"I may have done some funding, but not done, uh ... and never with the Rizzuto family! You mix a lot of things, sir. "
A little later, he explained to know Leonardo Rizzuto, because the latter is a customer of the family jewelery. "I met him there, yes."
His involvement in the 1000 of the Commune, from 2009:
"I was in the project two days. I wanted to buy the project; finally, it did not work and I left the company. "
Cormier will be stationed at least until August 2010, according to public records.
The Commune 1000 project was initiated by Tony Magi, shot dead on January 24th.
The former godfather Vito Rizzuto had acted in the shadows as conductor of the construction of this luxury condo complex near the Old Port of Montreal.
Rizzuto was rewarded by receiving five condos for the modest sum of $ 1, which he then sold for $ 1.7 million.
"It's still a good profit," investigator Éric Vecchio quipped during a testimony to the Charbonneau commission in March 2014.
In February 2011, a real estate company of Alain Cormier borrows $ 150,000 from Samprêt plus inc., A firm owned by Samy Bitton.
Cormier is using this money to buy a single-family home in Laval.
Bitton is well known to the police. In January 2016, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison in Tel Aviv for money laundering related to drug trafficking.
On the phone, Cormier also told us that he was a broker in the sale to Samy Bitton of the construction rights that were used for the 5th wharf project.
This condo project in Old Montreal was abandoned after Mr. Bitton's imprisonment in Israel.
