QUEBEC - The head of a Quebec anti-corruption unit has been forced to step aside over allegations of... crooked financial reporting.
Jacques Duchesneau, a former Montreal police chief and a onetime head of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, has temporarily left his post in Quebec's Transport Department.
He has been leading an anti-corruption unit tasked with examining reports of bid-rigging in public infrastructure contracts.
Such allegations have been at the heart of a year-long controversy involving construction companies, well-connected businessmen, and crime groups like the Mafia.
There have been numerous demands for a public inquiry and the Charest government has become deeply unpopular over its refusal to call one.
Duchesneau has agreed to step aside following a newspaper report that, when he was running to become Montreal's mayor a decade ago, he asked an organizer to provide false financial paperwork.
He reportedly persuaded his campaign organizer to put his name to financial donations that came from other sources.
Duchesneau had lost in his bid to become mayor in 1998 and the organizer says he wanted to quickly pay down his campaign debts.
