Stratagèmes criminels à la jonction des pouvoirs publics et des milieux d’affaires : les élites délinquantes et le processus d’octroi des contrats publics de construction

The research originated from a political scandal which spanned several years (2009-2015) in the province of Quebec. The thesis’ main argument is that the scandal years saw Quebec transformed from being considered the “historical golden land” of Canadian corruption into a province which developed one of the country’s most sophisticated systems of corruption and white-collar crime control. The thesis was constructed as a case-study, and addressed the three principal objects of criminological analysis: the breaking of laws, the making of laws, and the reaction to the breaking of laws (Sutherland and Cressey, 1947, p.1). The study applied multiple methods to achieve these goals. In the study of criminal decision-making (breaking of laws), Kramer and Michalowski’s (2006) state-corporate crime concept was applied to demonstrate the presence of multifactorial features of criminal systems fuelled by misbehaving at the intersection of private and public interests. Such conspiracies were found to be generalized across several municipalities throughout the province. For this portion of the thesis, data on all construction contracts awarded through public procurement in the entire history of what appeared to be one of Canada’s most corrupt municipalities, Laval (the 13th largest in the country), was systematically collected from 1965 to 2013. It was then analyzed using various social network measures. Testimonies from Quebec’s Commission of inquiry on the awarding and management of public contracts in the construction industry (hereafter, CEIC) were also coupled with a dozen of interviews conducted with regulators and corruption authorities in Quebec. The combination of methods helped assess the integrated, spatial and historical nature of illicit activities which undergirded many municipalities, Laval being one of the most notorious one. Traces of bid-rigging indicators in public procurement were indeed traced back to as early as the city’s founding in the 1960s. In the study of the making of laws, Lascoumes and Le Galès’ (2002) sociology of public action framework was expanded to investigate the structural, organizational, and individual forces behind the Quebec scandal. This section of the thesis unravels the sudden urge to legislate and investigate schemes that were deeply rooted in the province’s history. By making sense of the Quebec scandal, this sub-section demonstrates how larger structural and contextual factors gradually established increased incentives for elected officials to enhance legal and institutional controls on white-collar and corporate crimes which were found to be systemic across Quebec’s construction and political scenes. Finally, in the study of the reaction to the breaking of laws, testimonies from the CEIC were combined with interviews conducted with 22 actors in control agencies established as a direct result of the scandal: the Permanent Anticorruption Unit (UPAC in French), the Inspector General Bureau (BIG in French) of the city of Montreal, and the Bureau of integrity and ethics of Laval (BIEL in French). This last section shows how transitioning from a state of practical passivity to one of intense controls, monitoring, institutional rearrangements, and legislative efforts was accompanied, for regulatory and police authorities, by several benefits but substantial challenges as well.

Keyphrases: Corruption, Criminal elites, State-corporate crimes, White-collar crimes, Corruption, Bid-rigging (collusion), Illegal political financing, Criminal decision-making, Social reaction, Social control (regulation)