A day after a compliance audit committee recommended bringing legal proceedings against him, Coun. Giorgio Mammoliti is saying he’ll fight to defend his integrity.
“How would anybody feel if (their) integrity was challenged,” Mammoliti said in an exclusive interview with CP24. “You need to fight that.”
The three-person committee made their recommendation Monday, basing their decision on a forensic audit that found the councillor had overspent on his 2010 re-election campaign by about $12,000.
It also found that campaign expenses had not been properly documented, with Mammoliti occasionally using his personal bank account and credit card for campaign expenses.
If he is indeed charged and found guilty, Mammoliti, who has been a councillor since 1997, could face fines or possible removal from office, though the latter penalty has never been enforced against a municipal politician in Ontario.
Speaking Tuesday, Mammoliti said the controversy over his expenses amounts to a difference of opinions about where expenses from his abandoned mayoral bid end and expenses for his campaign to keep his council seat begin.
“Everything we gave to my auditor during the election we gave to this auditor and there were two sets of opinions as to what you can do and what you can’t,” Mammoliti said. “This auditor is now changing some definitions in our opinion.”
Mammoliti said his auditor advised him when he ended his mayoral run that he could continue using the same campaign office for his council seat run starting Aug. 27.
“The compliance auditor has determined arbitrarily -- and this is the unfairness of this -- that it should have started on Aug. 1,” Mammoliti said. “So every bill that the mayoral campaign had seen from Aug. 1 to Aug 27 now all of a sudden becomes a councillor expense. So there’s the bulk of the $12,000 right there.”
Mammoliti called his case “precedent setting” and said people who can’t afford expensive auditor advice could be deterred from running for office if he is found guilty.
Conspiracy claims
Mammoliti also spoke to comments he’s made recently claiming there are people systematically working against him and other members of council.
“I think if people start to connect the dots they’ll quickly realize that perhaps there are a few people in the city who have chosen to target others,” he said. “And that become illegal if people are doing it maliciously. It’s a tough thing to prove.
“There’s a lot of things I can’t talk about because there’s investigations going on as we speak,” he continued to say. “We’re taking it quite seriously. There was phone tampering. Now we just need to bring it out into the light so people can see it. We’ll do that when we’re ready and if we have to call the police we’ll do that.”
He also drew a distinction between phone tampering and phone tapping.
“I don’t know where this phone tapping thing comes from,” Mammoliti said. “I think the media’s kind of spun it their own way.”
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