#89
44 Charged by U.S. in New Jersey Corruption Sweep
Louis Lanzano/Associated Press [Source]
Agents led suspects from F.B.I. headquarters in Newark on Thursday. The inquiry began with questions on money laundering.
Published: July 23, 2009
A two-year corruption and international money-laundering investigation stretching from the Jersey Shore to Brooklyn to Israel and Switzerland culminated in charges against 44 people on Thursday, including three New Jersey mayors, two state assemblymen and five rabbis, the authorities said.
How the Corruption Case Unfolded
Related
Life Can Imitate Art: Indictments Describe Deals More Fit for a Crime Movie
(July 24, 2009)
Syrian Sephardic Communities Shaken by Charges Against a Leading Rabbi
(July 24, 2009)
Millionaire, Patron and Now Informant (July 24, 2009)
Criminal Complaints in New Jersey Corruption Inquiry
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
Peter J. Cammarano III, leaving the courthouse in Newark, was elected Hoboken mayor in June. He is accused of agreeing to help a supposed developer with his projects in exchange for cash.
Readers' Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
The case began with bank fraud charges against a member of an insular Syrian Jewish enclave centered in a seaside town. But when that man became a federal informant and posed as a crooked real estate developer offering cash bribes to obtain government approvals, it mushroomed into a political scandal that could rival any of the most explosive and sleazy episodes in New Jersey’s recent past.
It was replete with tales of the illegal sales of body parts; of furtive negotiations in diners, parking lots and boiler rooms; of nervous jokes about “patting down” a man who turned out to indeed be an informant; and, again and again, of the passing of cash — once in a box of Apple Jacks cereal stuffed with $97,000.
“For these defendants, corruption was a way of life,” Ralph J. Marra Jr., the acting United States attorney in New Jersey, said at a news conference. “They existed in an ethics-free zone.”
Mr. Marra said that average citizens “don’t have a chance” against the culture of influence peddling the investigation had unearthed.
Even veteran political observers were taken aback by the scope of the investigation. The mayors of Hoboken, Secaucus and Ridgefield were among those arrested.
“This is so massive,” said Joseph Marbach, a political scientist at Seton Hall University. “It’s going to just reinforce the stereotype of New Jersey politics and corruption.”
The arrests had immediate reverberations in the governor’s race, and a member of Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s administration was forced to resign after federal agents raided his home.
The authorities laid out two separate schemes, one involving money laundering that led to rabbis and members of the Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn and in the Jersey Shore town of Deal, where many of them have summer homes. The other dealt with political corruption and bribery and involved public officials mostly in Jersey City and Hoboken, where the pace of development has been particularly intense in recent years.
Linking the two schemes was the federal informant who was not named in court papers but whom people involved with the investigation identified as Solomon Dwek, a failed real estate developer and philanthropist who was arrested in May 2006 on charges of passing a bad $25 million check at a bank in Monmouth County, N.J.
Early on, Mr. Dwek helped investigators penetrate an extensive network of money laundering that involved rabbis in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, where the Syrian Jewish community is based, and in Deal and Elberon, towns on the Jersey Shore.
Mr. Dwek, a well-known member of the Syrian Jewish community whose parents founded the Deal Yeshiva, never concealed that he was facing bank fraud charges, instead telling targets, who included three rabbis in Brooklyn and two in New Jersey, that he was bankrupt and trying to conceal his assets, according to people involved in the case. The targets, in turn, accepted bank checks Mr. Dwek made out to charities that they oversaw, deducted a fee, and returned the rest to him in cash.
Much of the cash they provided him came from Israel, and some of that in turn came from a Swiss banker, prosecutors said. All told, some $3 million was laundered for Mr. Dwek since June 2007, prosecutors said.
The case shifted to focus on public corruption, prosecutors say, after one of the men accused of money laundering, Moshe Altman of Monsey, N.Y., a Hudson County developer, introduced Mr. Zwek to a politically connected building inspector in Jersey City, who then steered him to another city official, Maher Khalil.
Mr. Khalil, who is accused of accepting $30,000 in bribes from Mr. Dwek, made a series of referrals to what he called “players,” helping Mr. Dwek to branch out to a web of public officials, mayoral and council candidates, and their confidants.
Mr. Dwek — now operating under an assumed identity, according to people involved in the case — honed an approach: introduced to a local influence-peddler, he would say he was looking to build high-rises or other projects in their city or county.
He would offer $5,000 in cash for an upcoming campaign, or as a straight-up bribe, with the promise of more to come, and with earnest pleas that his official requests be “taken care of.” And he would pull the money out of the trunk of his car.
Nadav Neuhaus for The New York Times
Ralph J. Marra Jr., above center, acting United States attorney in New Jersey, said average citizens “don’t have a chance” against the culture of corruption unearthed.
- Egyptian Empire
- Greek Empire
- Roman Empire
- Third Reich
- European Empire