Andre Fabien - Montreal judge deposited $90,000 cash in an anonymous bank account

   Montreal Judge André Fabien got no respect from Montreal's finest.
   Picture this scene from a Montreal courthouse in 1977.
   Thirty officers from the Mobile Unit of the Montreal Urban Community Police filled the seats of a courtroom of the Montreal Sessions Court presided over by Fabien.
   When Judge Fabien entered, rather than stand - as is custom - every single cop stayed glued to his seat.
  Moments later, when their colleague, officer Andre Savard, entered to present evidence, they all rose in his honour.
   The police made the extraordinary protest because they believed that Fabien was corrupt and had been accepting gifts - like a swimming pool from lawyer Sidney Leithman - and cash bribes to fix cases.
   Fabien was named Montreal's Chief Sessions Judge in 1969 and was best known to history for sentencing FLQ terrorist Pierre-Paul Geoffroy in 1969 to 124 life sentences for his bombing activities, a record in the Commonwealth.
    Fabien's notoriety faded after that as he judged a smorgasbord of run-of-the-mill criminal cases.
    But what would become known as The Fabien Affair began on 24 January 1977 after Montreal lawyer Alfred Chevalier testified before the CECO crime commission.
   Investigators visited Fabien at his office and then at his home but he refused to answer questions.
   On 1 July Fabien agreed to suspend his functions during the investigation of his activities but three weeks later he returned to work in a decision he took on his own.
   On August 26, 1977 PQ MNA and provincial Justice Minister Marc-André Bédard asked Fabien, then aged 54, to suspend his duties again and this time recommended an investigation commission.
   Fabien, investigators learned, came to the Banque Canadienne Nationale at 160 St. Charles W. in Longueuil in August 1976 to deposit $90,000 in cash, all $100 bills.
   Bank manager Raymond Payette was Fabien's longtime friend and neighbour and agreed to open an account under a fake name for the judge.
   The cash was deposited in what was known as a "confidential account" that offered no interest. Payette confessed that such accounts were occasionally used but it was his first time opening one for someone under a phony name. The bank manager said he believed that he had committed no crime.
   Fabien sid that the cash was a gift from his father and he put it in the special account to avoid arousing jealousy among his brothers, who did not receive the same family favour.
   Fabien used $10,000 of the cash renovating his home in Outremont and spent most of the rest on a life insurance policy.
   Fabien's career as a judge was clearly over forever.

    Journalist Claude Poirier discussed the allegations in an article that ran in the 5 June 1977 edition of Dimanche Matin newspaper.

   Fabien sued the newspaper for $400,000 in 1980 for defamation
   Radio Canada journalist André Dubois penned a quick book on the matter Le dessous de l'affaire Fabien, published in the spring of 1978.
   In 1982 years a judge ordered the newspaper to pay Fabien $95,000, which included $75,000 for damage to his reputation and $20,000 for damages to his health.
   Fabien also laid a similar suit against radio station CKVL for broadcasting conversation along the same lines between Mathias Rioux and Alfred Chevalier.
   Fabien was then forced to return to his old stomping grounds, the Montreal sessions court that he once presided over, this time as a defendant facing criminal charges of tax evasion.
   Andre Fabien was charged in 1982 with failing to report income of $145,000 from 1970 to 1976.
  He was convicted of the seven charges of tax evasion and ordered to repay Revenue Quebec $57,000. Two years later an appeals court reduced his fine to $18,500. He served no prison time.
  Fabien faded into obscurity thereafter while Chevalier continued as a lawyer and adviser at the City of Montreal until the late 1980s when he attracted attention involving controversy in municipal affairs in Ville St. Laurent.