A bankrupt real estate developer, who leaves in the straw a hundred home buyers in Laval, had just borrowed a large sum from a private loan company linked to a notorious fraudster. His own brother, found dead in a model company home five years ago, had served time for fraud, conspiracy and gangsterism.
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On June 15 and 16, around 100 customers of the Bel-Habitat company received an unexpected phone call. The real estate developer, who had been late in delivering their new home to them for months, urged them to come and sign a document in Laval. The paper formalized the delivery date of their home, as well as their membership in the New Home Warranty Program, protecting their investment up to $ 50,000. The long and agonizing wait seemed to finally come to an end.
Thirteen days later, to everyone’s amazement, the company placed itself under the protection of the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act. The real estate developer Luc Perrier, untraceable since that date, owes nearly 25 million to 230 suppliers and customers.
PHOTO FROM BEL-HABITAT SITE
Luc Perrier
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Many homebuyers, who have made down payments well in excess of the $ 50,000 guaranteed by insurance, risk losing big.
Some buyers even advanced the entire purchase amount for their future home, for a discount of around 10% of the total, an unusual practice that put them at risk of losing the unsecured amount.
About $ 17 million from those down payments are gone, according to public bankruptcy records. The Laval Police Department and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are investigating the debacle, in collaboration with bankruptcy trustee Raymond Chabot and insurer GCR.
Luc Perrier nevertheless enjoyed an unblemished reputation in the construction industry. His company of a dozen employees built very good quality houses, according to several people interviewed. Luc Perrier has never been the subject of complaints to the Régie du bâtiment du Québec.
A nebulous financial past
Our investigation reveals, however, that the businessman, who has already made two personal bankruptcies in 1996 and 2007, had a nebulous financial past.
At the beginning of June 2021, when Bel-Habitat’s bankruptcy process had already started, Luc Perrier personally borrowed $ 119,000 from the company at number 9259-7277 Québec inc., Indicate the documents from the Land Register of Quebec. consulted by Press. Bel-Habitat had already borrowed, then repaid, a loan of 1.1 million to this same company in October 2018.
This numbered company, which makes private loans in the taxi industry, is linked to businessman Ronald Chicoine, who was sentenced in 2011 to 45 months in prison for fraud and money laundering. With his company Speedo Financial Company, Chicoine had produced false invoices to the tune of 40 million in the construction industry.
One of his accomplices, at the time, was the accountant Serge Perrier, the brother of Luc Perrier, who was sentenced to 52 months of imprisonment for fraud, theft, conspiracy, production and use of forgery and gangsterism. The stratagem developed by Ronald Chicoine, which required the complicity of “several professionals”, including Serge Perrier, according to a judgment of the Superior Court, consisted in obtaining false loans from shell companies installed in tax havens like Switzerland, the Liechtenstein and the Bahamas. Ronald Chicoine, who secretly controlled these overseas companies, used them to grant himself high-rate bogus loans, from which he deducted fictitious interest in his tax returns.
PHOTO THE PRESS
Serge Perrier, brother of Luc Perrier
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In 2013 and 2016, Société Financière Speedo transferred its rights to various loans and mortgages to 9259-7277 Québec inc., Documents from the Land Register indicate.
Last week, the president of 9259-7277 Quebec inc., Régent Lamoureux, a former director of Société financier Speedo, according to the federal register of companies, did not want to answer our questions when we spoke to him on the intercom. of a house in Laval belonging to Ronald Chicoine. He directed us to Manon Ladouceur, whose name appears as official agent of 9259-7277 Québec inc. in the mortgage loan contracts granted to Bel-Habitat and Luc Perrier. This same Manon Ladouceur had acted as agent for Speedo Financial during the assignment of the mortgage receivables to 9259-7277 Québec inc. in 2013 and 2016.
“We are in shock for the victims,” said the latter. “We weren’t aware of it at all [de la faillite de Bel-Habitat], we learned it in the newspapers ”, she added, affirming that Ronald Chicoine was“ not at all ”involved in the company 9259-7277 Québec inc., which granted the loan to Luc Perrier . “We have no idea what will happen in this case. ”
At the turn of the 2010s, while working as a financial advisor, Luc Perrier had already borrowed nearly $ 300,000 from clients, including $ 94,900 from Ronald Chicoine through a series of “small loans at relatively short intervals”, reveals a decision of the Financial Security Chamber. This gesture, which placed him in a conflict of interest, earned him a 10-year delisting for having “taken advantage of the bond of trust that he had established with his clients” by borrowing “from one of the sums that have could be used to partially reimburse the other ”, concluded the discipline committee of the Chamber.
Serge Perrier found dead in a model house
According to our information, Serge Perrier, Luc’s brother, played a very active role in Bel-Habitat, alongside his brother Luc. Press traced several mortgage and real estate transactions for which he was the agent for the company.
But in March 2016, he was found dead by Luc Perrier in one of the model houses of Bel-Habitat, on the 55e Avenue in Laval, which also served as a sales office. The police quickly concluded that it was a natural death due to illness.
The “best salesman in the world” and “an incredible accountant”
The notary Robert Frégeau, who formalized dozens of transactions for Luc Perrier and Bel-Habitat for 10 years, affirms that the brothers Luc and Serge formed “an extraordinary pair”. Luc was “the best salesperson in the world” and an “incredible manipulator”, and Serge, “an incredible accountant who had all the figures in mind, he remembered them job by job and knew where he was going”.
Both [frères] made the pair. When Serge died, the Boeing lost an engine. Luc was deprived of his perfect complement.
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Robert Frégeau, notary who formalized transactions for Luc Perrier and Bel-Habitat
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Me Frégeau claims to have himself lost more than $ 130,000 which he loaned to Luc Perrier to help him get through the COVID-19 crisis. He says it is not clear to him whether the Bel-Habitat debacle is a fraud or a catastrophic bankruptcy. “It is a seemingly dubious bankruptcy,” he is content to say.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
Unfinished Bel-Habitat houses
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With hindsight, however, it seems clear to him that Luc Perrier “exploited the greed of people” and “took advantage of their ignorance” by waving “a carrot in front of their eyes” to make them pay more than what they had to pay as a stake. initial funds on their future home. The notary says that he was systematically “put in front of a fait accompli” when he was responsible for formalizing the transactions. In many cases, the buyers were poor immigrants or people from ethnic minorities who spoke little French.
According to him, his business started to turn badly with the development of a project of twenty residences on a vacant lot near rue des Abeilles, in Laval-Ouest, which he acquired in 2017.
Work that is not progressing
The promoter had paid 1 million to start the infrastructure work, says the notary, but it took a long time to be completed, “because Laval, then molasses in winter, it’s the same.” “In Laval, the delays in obtaining services [de voirie et de distribution d’eau] are quite heavy. All the more so since the Charbonneau commission, [de] so that it is no longer the elected officials who run the technical service, but rather the engineers, who have their own calendar ”, maintains Mr.e Frégeau.
Luc Perrier, who was already borrowing from private lenders at 10 or 12% interest (a standard rate in the construction industry) to build his empire, had to pay back thousands of dollars to pay off temporary housing to buyers who had been waiting for their homes for months.
It was the project that rocked him in the middle of the lake with a piano strapped to the end of his foot. He had come to borrow from people on the outskirts of the solar system.
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Robert Frégeau, notary who formalized transactions for Luc Perrier and Bel-Habitat
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Among these people was Ronald Chicoine, whom Mr.e Frégeau qualifies as a “phantom partner” of the company at number 9259-7277 Québec inc.
« [Luc Perrier] was quick to get out of the clutches of Chicoine, because there was a disagreement, says Me Frégeau. Luc Perrier even lent him the intention to take control of his company. So he organized himself to refinance and settle his accounts with Chicoine. “
For the moment, only the trustee, the insurer GCR and the police investigators have a precise idea of where the deposits of the customers went. Luc Perrier, he remains untraceable.
With the collaboration of Marie-Eve Fournier, Press, who collected testimonies as part of this investigation.
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