William Obront

William Obront (27 March 1924 – 12 October 2017), better known as "Obie", was a Canadian-American gangster and the principal money launderer for the Cotroni family of Montreal, often described as being the "Canadian Meyer Lansky".

One of three children of Rebecca and Jacob Obront, he was born in Montreal into a family of butchers of Russian-Jewish descent.

Obront began working in his uncle's butcher shop in the Atwater Market as a teenager.

In the late 1940s, he opened up the Hi-Ho Cafe and the Bal Tabarin nightclub, both of which were popular with the Montreal underworld.

Regular visitors to Obront's businesses included the gangsters Vincenzo Cotroni and Nicola Di Iorio of Montreal along with Salvatore Giglio of New York's Bonanno family.

In 1950, he opened up the Beret Blue nightclub alongside the gangsters Peter Adamo and Frank D'Asti.

His businesses were considered to be just fronts for money laundering for the Cotroni family.

Obront had allied himself to Cotroni once he saw the profits to be made from the French Connection heroin smuggling network-of which Cotroni played a key role in-and offered his services as a money launder.

Obront came to be known as "Canada's Meyer Lansky" as he played a role within the Cotroni family analogous to that played by Meyer Lansky within the American Mafia.

Peter Edwards, the crime correspondent of The Toronto Star newspaper, wrote: "Obront gave the Cotronis a conduit between the streets and mainstream business, and between the Italian gangs of St. Leonard and Montreal's Jewish community, of which Obront was a member in poor standing".

By the end of the 1950s, Obront was a millionaire, and on 12 October 1961, he founded Trans-World Investment Ltd, which engaged in both legal and illegal financial ventures.

One of Obront's clients was Mitchell Bronfman of the famous Bronfman family.

Mitchell was the nephew of the whiskey tycoon Samuel Bronfman, who was one of Canada's richest men.

Mitchell Bronfman had opened up the Execaire Aviation Limited airline, which operated unprofitably between 1962 and 1974.

Despite being a Bronfman, he was unable to access the family fortune, which was held in trust, forcing him to turn to Obront to keep his airline flying.

In 1966, Obront featured heavily in the Munsinger affair.

The Munsinger Affair was a scandal occasioned by the discovery that Gerda Munsinger, a German woman who lived in Canada and who was accused of being a Soviet spy, had been the long-time mistress of the former associate defense minister Pierre Sévigny.

Munsinger, a prostitute in her native Germany, had worked as a waitress at the Chic 'n' Coop Restaurant in Montreal which was owned by Obront.

Allegations were made that Obront was aware of Munsinger's relationship with Sévigny and had set up secret cameras in her bedroom to record Munsinger having sex with Sévigny while he was the associate defense minister for the purpose of blackmailing the government of John Diefenbaker.

Munsinger, who returned to Germany by the time the scandal broke, was initially described as being dead.

Robert Reguly, a reporter from The Toronto Star tracked her down to her apartment in Munich, and she stated in the ensuring interview that she had feared Obront, whom she described as being very close to a number of powerful gangsters in Montreal.

A journalist, Pax Plante, called Cotroni and Obront "The Untouchables" of the Montreal underworld who could never be prosecuted.

Between 1967 and 1974, Bronfman borrowed $1,417,250 from Obront.

The association with Bronfman served to give Obront credibility on Saint Jacques Street (the financial district of Montreal).

During his career as a money launder, Obront moved at least $83 million dollars via his various bank accounts for Vic Cotroni and his underboss Paolo Violi.

Edwards wrote about Obront's work: "His job was to hide the true ownership of funds raised through gambling, loan-sharking, drug-smuggling and other enterprises, and also to put those millions of dollars to work, generating further revenues."

Obront's access to interest-free capital and the services of Cotroni family thugs put the legitimate businesses that competed with Obront's businesses in the investment, home-improvement, restaurant, meat-packing, laundry and construction industries in the Monteral area at a "daunting disadvantage".

As a non-Italian in the Cotroni family, Obront's relations with both Cotroni and Violi were correct, but never friendly.

Obront always described Cotroni and Violi as his business partners and never as his friends.

In 1967, four different companies controlled by Obront won the right to supply meat for the concession stands at Expo 67.

The Fleu de Ly Vending Machine Company, owned by Obront's nephew Joe Frankel, was one of the companies supplying the meat which in turn came from Obront-owned Obie's Meat Market, which purchased its meat in turn from Reggio Foods.

The owner of Reggio Foods was Armand Courville of the Cotroni family.

At the time, Claude Wagner, a politician with the Liberal party accused the Union Nationale government of Daniel Johnson Sr.. of corruption, saying all four companies that won the contracts to supply food for the concession stands at Expo 67 were run by people from the Cotroni family.

In 1968, Obront was questioned by the police in connection with two murders.

One of the murder victims was a man who was behind in a loan to Obront who was executed by a hooded hitman while paying cards.

In 1973, the firm of Reggio Foods supplied the meat at the Quebec Summer Games at Rouyn-Noranda, which caused so many athletes to become seriously ill after eating the meat that the games had to be cancelled.

The Quebec health authorities seized 20,000 pounds of meat from Reggio Foods, which turned out to be decaying horse meat with the labels saying it was unfit for human consumption having been ripped off.

In 1975, the Royal Commission known as La Commission d'Enquête sur le Crime Organisé (CECO) reported that 400,000 pounds of the meat supplied to Expo 67 was unfit for human consumption as Obront and his associates used meat intended as dog food instead in order to increase his profits.

In 1975, Reggio Foods was shut down by the Quebec health authorities for its gross violations of the food safety laws, through Courville was not charged.

The tainted meat scandal along with the revelation that much of the meat sold at the concession stands at Expo 67 was unfit for human consumption brought Obront along with the other leaders of the Cotroni family much notoriety in Quebec.