MONTREAL: A city-based Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) auditor was convicted on charges of corruption in a case which included testimony about notorious Hells Angel Maurice “Mom” Boucher and several other government agents soliciting bribes.
In 2005, Francesco Fazio was auditing restaurant La Belle Place. After completing the audit, Fazio told owner Stamatis Argiroudis that he would owe $600,000 in taxes based on Fazio’s estimate of unreported revenue, according to a Montreal Gazette report..
According to testimony, Fazio then asked to speak to Argiroudis in the restaurant’s handicapped bathroom stall and said that for $90,000, a more favourable estimate could be made.
Argiroudis declined to pay the bribe and the file was eventually transferred to another auditor.
In her ruling, Judge Manon Ouimet said she did not believe Fazio’s defence of having given up the file due to threats from Argiroudis. Fazio had claimed that the restauranteur mentioned having underworld connections, including former Hell’s Angels boss Boucher.
Fazio is the first of eight agents arrested in an RCMP sting operation targeting the CRA’s Montreal office to be convicted and is set to be sentenced in July.
