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".

[3] 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.

[6] 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.

[7] 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.

[7] 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.

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.

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.

[13] 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.

[15] Elkind further noted that both Cotroni and Obront felt absolutely no guilt about selling rancid meat that caused people to become sick and sometimes die, saying all that both men cared about was money.

[15] 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.

[7] As a non-Italian, Obront could never be a "made man", but he was known to be close to both Vincenzo Cotroni and Paolo Violi who used him very heavily to launder their money.

[7] Obront's operations in the Ottawa area handled an average of about $50,000 in bets per day, with 25% of the daily earnings going to Violi.

[7] Through his partner Harry Workman, Obront took control of a number of brokerage firms with good reputations, which he liked because it made it easier for him to swindle the investors.

Though Obront was talented at making money, he was also by his own admission "a degenerate gambler" who had a compulsion to gamble, sometimes betting as much as $50,000 on a typical weekend.

[7] To assist with his money laundering, Obront incorporated numerous companies, many of which were just "dummy corporations" which existed only to create a confusing paper trail.

[11] La Commission d'Enuête sur le Crime Organisé in its 1977 report Organized Crime and the World of Business stated: "One of the characteristics common to all the companies incorporated in Quebec in which William Obront was known to have had interests, openly or through a front-man, is the fact that they almost never complied with the laws concerning the information required annually from companies in Quebec...People who hide behind many real or fictitious corporations are also trying to cover their tracks and mislead the police, the income tax authorities, and the public.

[19] Angelo Lanzo, a Cotroni family member called Obront from a pay phone at the Sirloin Barn Restaurant, which was tapped by the police.

[11] La Commission d'Enquête sur le Crime Organisé discovered that some of the cheques that were deposited into Obront's bank account at 637 Decarie branch of the Bank of Montreal were signed Simon Templar (the hero of a popular 1960s British television show 'The Saint), Marc Codeau (one of the commissioners with CECO) and Pierre Trudeau.

[11] In August 1974, Obront fled to Florida to avoid having to testify at La Commission d'Enquête sur le Crime Organisé.

[21] Valmore Delisle, the manager of the Banque Canadienne Nationale's branch at 500 Place d'Armes, testified at the CECO commission that he never changed his policies towards Obront because he was "financially solvent".

[19] Justice Jean "Bulldog" Dutil, the chief commissioner, told Obront that he could either testify or go to prison for a year for contempt of the royal commission.

[13] Obront was also convicted of defrauding investors in Obie's Meat Market of $51,991 and sentenced to four years in prison and fined $75,000 on 3 December 1976.

[19] Obront's 22 year-old son, Alan, told the media that his father was being held in harsh conditions at the maximum security Laval Institute, saying: "He's living in a small cell with no windows and a pan on the floor for a toilet.

[23] In 1978, the Commisso brothers sent the hitman Cecil Kirby to Montreal to kill Irving Kott, a stockbroker who worked for Cotroni and Obront.