The former boss of Sutton Quebec was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison for arson. He will also have to pay $1.5 million to his victims.
Posted at 4:03 p.m.
Updated at 4:13 p.m.
“I plead guilty,” José Christophe Folla, 71, had just declared twice, by teleconference from Saint-Jérôme prison.
He faced charges of arson at his competitors between 2017 and 2022 in the Laurentians, and of having plotted to light other fires, until his arrest in January 2024.
Judge Michel Bellehumour immediately pronounced his sentence, negotiated during facilitation sessions between the public prosecutor and the defense.
The court also took into account a settlement of two million made in the context of a civil suit from the insurer Promutuel, which claimed sums from it to compensate for the damage it caused.
The judge subtracted from his sentence the 262 days already spent in detention, with time and a half. Folla therefore has nearly four years left in prison to serve.
Vengeance
Folla sponsored the series of disasters with two accomplices, Benjamin Amar and Alain-Marc Nahmias, also accused. Their case is continuing.
With the exception of a fire started by mistake in the wrong place, all these crimes targeted former partners who joined the competition, Christian Bouvrette and François Léger, then the succession of the latter after his death, in 2022.
The buildings in question housed branches of Royal LePage Humania which they owned. The two men worked with Sutton Quebec until 2017, before changing affiliations, and Folla would not have digested it.
“From 2017 to 2022, the accused entertained the idea of taking revenge for the betrayal he felt he had suffered,” mentions the agreed statement of facts filed in court. With the help of accomplices, he recruited people ready to burn down buildings belonging to the Léger-Bouvrette group. »
In total, Folla admitted to having caused nine fires causing “nearly six million” in damage.
The statement adds, however, that the former boss of Sutton Quebec “always insisted that fires be lit at times when it is reasonable to believe that the buildings are unoccupied.” His crimes therefore did not harm any victims.
Victim testimonies
The most serious fire “by mistake” affected the building housing the Remax Bonjour brokers, rue Principale in Saint-Sauveur. According to the statement of facts, it caused 2.5 million in damages alone in February 2021, but Folla’s accomplices then had the wrong target.
The property housing Royal LePage Humania that they were supposed to burn down was just a stone’s throw away. He himself burned five times.
One of the former co-owners of the building housing Remax Bonjour targeted in error, André Chesnay, testified on Wednesday as part of the observations on the sentence.
He talked about doing business with Folla before, and how he regretted it. “I immediately told the Sûreté du Québec not to look any further than him,” he explained.
He claimed in court that he saw the former boss of Sutton Quebec in front of his destroyed building the day after the fire, in his car.
“If Mr. Folla spends time inside, I hope that he will have time to see that money is not the only reason in life, that he will be able to examine his conscience, and the day he comes out, he will perhaps be able to pull himself together, it is never too late to make an honest and respectable life”, concluded André Chesnay, while the accused nodded from left to right. the prison, on the screen.
The court was also able to hear how the police were able to count on the collaboration of an undercover civilian agent, who previously planned the arsons with Folla. A publication ban prevents the media from naming him.
