Federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed bribery and extortion prices on Tuesday in opposition to 70 present and former workers of the New York Metropolis Housing Authority, a sweeping indictment for a troubled group.
Damian Williams, the U.S. legal professional for the Southern District of New York, stated it was the biggest variety of federal bribery prices the Division of Justice had ever handed out in a single day.
In describing the scheme, Mr. Williams stated dozens of workers, together with superintendents and assistant superintendents, had taken greater than $2 million in bribes from contractors in search of to do work at condo buildings all through town’s 5 boroughs, from Stapleton Homes on Staten Island to Eastchester Gardens within the Bronx.
Prosecutors stated that the scheme revealed Tuesday concerned small-dollar repairs — amounting to below $10,000 — to issues like home windows and plumbing: offers that don’t undergo aggressive bidding and are supposed to rapidly tackle issues in buildings.
Greater than $13 million in work, nevertheless, was wrongly handed out, prosecutors stated, with defendants demanding fee to authorize work or to approve it after it was performed. The accused workers often acquired kickbacks of 10 to 20 % of the contract worth, prosecutors stated, although typically the funds had been larger.
All informed, almost 100 buildings — almost one-third of the authority’s properties — had been touched by the scheme, Mr. Williams stated, calling it “basic pay to play.”
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