MONTREAL – As five days of testimony came to a close, disgraced city of Montreal engineer Gilles Surprenant wanted to apologize to the population at large.

He "bitterly regrets" his role in a scheme that fleeced taxpayers out of untold millions of dollars, he told the Charbonneau Commission -- a role that earned him more than $730,000 in kickbacks from a dozen contractors.

But just how repentant he was became a matter of intense debate Thursday as a lawyer for the city of Montreal took over the cross-examination of Surprenant, and suggested he was motivated by one thing alone: greed.

Surprenant — aka Mr. TPS (Taxe Pour Surprenant) — has painted himself as a reluctant participant in a scheme designed by and for a dozen contractors who hijacked the system of awarding public works contracts, and in the process raised the costs of infrastructure work in Montreal by 30 per cent over the last decade.

But Martin St-Jean, the lawyer for Surprenant's much-maligned former employer, suggested Surprenant knew exactly what he was doing when he allegedly accepted a first envelope full of cash in 1988 from Frank Catania.

St-Jean asked Surprenant whether he knew what was coming, when Catania called him to his office.

"I imagined it would be to get something," Surprenant replied.

"You knew what you were getting into and went voluntarily?" asked St-Jean.

"Yes."

So the decision to accept the money wasn't one made hastily in a matter of seconds, St-Jean suggested, but rather a well-thought-out response to an attractive offer.

St-Jean then asked him whether he had money problems back then. No.

Did he have problems with his health, drugs, gambling? St-Jean continued.

No. No. No.

"So (it was) for pure avarice to have more, to fill your pockets with taxpayers' money."

"I took the money. I went to meet the contractor, he gave me an envelope and I took it. It was a big error in judgment."

The Charbonneau Commission has heard that that fateful meeting was the first of many over a 20-year period, in which Surprenant accepted amounts of between $1,000 and $22,000, for artificially inflating the city's estimates for upcoming contracts by 30 per cent to 35 per cent, and turning a blind eye to the collusion of entrepreneurs who took turns "winning" the dozens of lucrative contracts that resulted.

In the first rigged Catania contract, for example, the original estimate for work to be done on a sewer on Belvedere Circle in Westmount was $250,000.

Catania suggested Surprenant go back and "review" the estimate, so Surprenant boosted it to $420,000, then accepted Catania's bid for almost $500,000 to do the work. Surprenant received $4,000 cash for his troubles.

But St-Jean also took issue with Surprenant constantly using "we" ("on" in French) to explain what was happening at city hall. Surprenant has been vague and evasive when asked how he knew others were on the take.

City employees Luc Leclerc, François Thériault and Michel Paquette, and Surprenant's direct superiors — Robert Marcil and Yves Themens — were aware of the collusion and may have accepted cash or gifts for their participation in the scheme, Surprenant told the commissioners. But no one ever told him as much, and he never told anyone about the bribes he was receiving. He certainly didn't pin up photos of himself playing golf with reputed mob boss Vito Rizzuto, he said.