Showing posts with label Charles Hynes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charles Hynes. Show all posts

Thursday, July 31, 2014

MORE ETHICS PROBLEMS : Cuomo's corrupt budget machinations intersect with state and local prosecutors

REUTERS EXCLUSIVE : Gov. Cuomo intervened in BNP Paribas settlement deal to get $1 billion more for New York state fund

Gov. Cuomo has claimed that the state is broke, that it can neither afford to support community hospitals, nor fully finance the construction of a new Tappan Zee Bridge ; meanwhile, the state is rolling in new billions in Wall Street fines

In an update to a blog post from last December about the Hunger Games behind the New York City and New York State budgets gimmicks, now comes Reuters with an exclusive story detailing the billions in windfalls from Wall Street corruption settlements.

The biggest revelation in the Reuters article was that Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) had bullied Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance out of an extra $1 billion from his original $2.2 billion share of the mammoth $9 billion settlement paid by the French bank BNP Paribas to end investigations into the bank's violation of banking sanctions against the nations of the Sudan, Cuba, and Iran.

Gov. Cuomo won the additional $1 billion on top of a $2.24 billion slice that the state was already set to receive, bringing Albany's cut of the BNP Paribas settlement to a whopping $3.29 billion. For the office of the Manhattan DA, Mr. Vance kept $449 million, and the government of New York City kept $447 million. The balance of the BNP Paribas settlement, $4.5 billion, was kept by the U.S. federal government. The settlement has already been paid and divided up, according to the Reuters report.

New York State's haul of $3.29 billion is in addition to the IPO-sized $8 billion Medicaid waiver that the Obama administration granted to New York State following Gov. Cuomo's scorched earth campaign of austerity cuts to the state's Medicaid program. Gov. Cuomo's Medicaid cuts were so draconian, leading to healthcare service cuts and hospital closings, that some Medicaid patients are suing the state in a federal class action lawsuit to roll back some of Gov. Cuomo's cuts. The $8 billion Medicaid waiver is expected to be paid, in the form of extra budget allocations, over a period of five years, according to Capital New York. The Reuters report referred to another possible $500 million that New York State received in settlements from Standard Chartered Bank and ING Bank NV. A further $700 million, not included in the Reuters report, was received by New York State after banking giant Credit Suisse pled guilty and paid to end an investigation into the bank's controversial tax evasion operations.

Gov. Cuomo, a neoliberal Democrat, is facing a tough reelection this year following endless controversies surrounding the political machinations at play in his decision to prematurely close a corruption-fighting panel, the Moreland Commission. As a result of a pattern of interference with the investigation panel, Gov. Cuomo is vulnerable to a possible federal criminal investigation for obstruction of justice, amongst other likely charges. Under normal circumstances, the governor would use these extra state resources for pork barrel projects to buy up large voting blocks he needs to win a glorious reelection by a margin of victory wider than his father's, which has been said is his goal. But nobody knows what the governor is doing with the approximately $12.5 billion in new-found revenue.

Some of the Medicaid waiver is meant to go for healthcare services, presumably to help fund the state's expansion of Obamacare under Medicaid, but when the governor recently announced a plan to bend back the infection curve for HIV/AIDS in the state as part of a landmark effort to effectively end the AIDS crisis, his politically-timed announcement only promised to allocate a measly $5 million for this effort, an amount that some AIDS activists do not believe in enough to do outreach in some of the hardest-hit communities. If there is an $8 billion pot of dedicated healthcare resources available that is supplemented with another $4.5 billion in Wall Street settlement monies, why is the governor only allocating $5 million in next year's budget to ending the AIDS pandemic in New York State by the year 2020. Achieving this noble but ambitious goal in less than 6 years with a kick-off budget of only $5 million seems unrealistic.

It doesn't add up.

In the last year, the Cuomo administration kept saying that New York State could not afford to bail out Long Island College Hospital, or LICH, in Brooklyn, but yet here is the governor sitting on a pile of billions while hospitals are closed and Medicaid home care services are uniformly being cut for people most in need. More generally, when New York State planned to build a new $4 billion Tappan Zee Bridge, the governor initially proposed funding some of the construction costs with a controversial loan of over $500 million from a state environmental fund in a bizarre budget maneuver. Government reform activists were horrified by the governor's budget gimmicks. Activists demanded to know how the governor planned to really pay for the costs of the new bridge, and the release of the financial information was stalled until finally the state government released redacted financial plans, keeping voters in the dark about how Gov. Cuomo intended to pay for the new bridge -- in spite of having billions in resources.

Similar criticisms can be made of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has garnered hundred of millions of dollars in Wall Street settlement monies for the city's coffers. The city is also poised to raise approximately $1 billion from the proceeds of the sale of zone-busting air rights around Grand Central Terminal. With these resources at hand or on the horizon, the mayor did nothing to bail out LICH, either, and as progressives demand all the resources to finally end homelessness for youths in the city, the mayor keeps stalling, afraid to part with the city's millions, and, like Gov. Cuomo, refusing to account for his plans for these jackpots.

Of the hundred of millions of dollars of the Wall Street settlement monies remaining with the Manhattan DA's office, some of that money is being allocated for costly tech contracts to upgrade police capabilities, whilst other parts of the Manhattan DA's proceeds will be used to pay to upgrade security at public housing developments. These two areas are plagued by corruption. New York City has a history of approving and funding outsourced technology projects, like CityTime and the ECTP 911 emergency call system that have led to combined cost over-runs nearing $2 billion, because there is no oversight. The security at the city's public housing developments is grossly inadequate, and even after millions of dollars are allocated to improve security doors, security cameras, and other measures, those improvements never seem to materialize. Since there is no taxpayer oversight of the city's five district attorneys' offices, taxpayers have no watchful eye supervising these gargantuan settlements. Former Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes, for example, faces city, state, and possible federal investigations over using funds seized from criminals to pay for a campaign consultant.

As the Reuters piece pointed out, Gov. Cuomo saw these billions, and he sent his loyalists to upset sensitive settlement negotiations until he managed to enlarge his cut. Even New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has clashed over proceeds in respect of still yet another settlement, that one involving $613 million (not reflected in the amounts indicated above) from JPMorgan Chase, only to be similarly challenged by Gov. Cuomo, too. But nobody knows what really happens to this money, or to the budget offsets that they create, once politicians become involved. At first, DA Vance had planned to send his office's entire $2.2 billion (before the governor slashed that by about half) to a federal asset forfeiture fund, which appears to be some kind of slush fund of the U.S. Treasury.

Do Gov. Cuomo, the district attorneys, and the mayor plan to account to voters where all this money is going to, and who can account to voters how this money is actually being used ?

Where is the transparency ?

As federal prosecutors continue their possible criminal investigation into the governor's interference with the Moreland Commission, government reform activists wonder why the state attorney general and local prosecutors have been loath to serve as a check on the governor's political over-reach. Perhaps Gov. Cuomo's heavy-handed budget machinations, which intersect with the budgets of state and local prosecutors, serve as one possible explanation. If all things were equal (and they are not), is Gov. Cuomo trying to starve prosecutors of the resources they need with which to investigate political and campaign corruption ?

RELATED


Gov. Cuomo intervened in BNP Paribas settlement deal to get $1 billion more for New York state fund (Reuters)

Inquiry Widens Into Hynes’s Spending as Prosecutor (The New York Times)

Gov. Cuomo pleas for federal help on Brooklyn hospital closures (The New York Daily News)

New York State board approves scaled-back loan for Tappan Zee Bridge project (The New York Daily News)


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Thursday, June 26, 2014

More shady details emerge from Hynes-Matz scandal via Arzt deposition ; reform activists expect still yet more shady revelations

Hynes’ ex-spokesman Arzt testifies drug money advisor Matz held weekly meetings

RELATED


Hynes’ ex-spokesman testifies advisor held weekly meetings (The New York Post)

George Arzt - Charles Hynes - Scott Levenson photo Arzt-Hynes-Levenson_zpsa4436581.jpg

What else did former D.A. Hynes' other campaign consultants know, and when did they know it ?

In a sworn testimony provided in a deposition on Monday, establishment campaign consultant George Arzt, the former spokesman for disgraced Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes, stated that Mortimer Matz, the controversial campaign consultant reportedly paid for with cash proceeds from drug sales, attended D.A. Hynes' weekly campaign meetings.

These weekly campaign meetings included staff from the Brooklyn District Attorney's office, and Mr. Matz advised the doomed Hynes reelection campaign, Mr. Arzt stated.

Mr. Arzt was deposed on Monday, The New York Post reported, in connection with a $150 million lawsuit filed by Jabbar Collins. Mr. Collins man wrongfully convicted by former D.A. Hynes’ office and lost 15 years of his life locked up in jail, before he was finally exonerated.

Still yet to emerge from startling allegations that the former Brooklyn District attorney used his access to criminal forfeiture cash to reportedly pay for Mr. Matz's campaign consulting services is the truth about how much did D.A. Hynes' other campaign consultants know about this allegedly illegal arrangement. Besides Mr. Arzt, the controversial campaign consultant and lobbyist Scott Levenson of The Advance Group, also worked on D.A. Hynes' failed reelection campaign last year. For his consulting work and for the costs of printing campaign literature, Mr. Levenson's firm was paid over $600,000 from D.A. Hynes's official campaign committee. If reports are true, namely, that former D.A. Hynes used his access to criminal forfeiture cash to pay for Mr. Matz's services, then that would have left greater resources in D.A. Hynes' official campaign committee account with which to pay other campaign advisors, such as Mr. Arzt and Mr. Levenson.

Stay tuned . . . .

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Long history of prosecutorial and ethical misconduct by Brooklyn D.A. Hynes triggers proposal for state disciplinary commission

In New York, the state Attorney General has lost control over his wayward District Attorneys. Now, the State Legislature wants to appoint a disciplinary commission to review the corrupt acts of the state's "Dirty D.A.'s"

Charles Hynes photo charles-hynes_zps067ecc4d.jpg

RELATED


Prosecutor misconduct commission moves forward in “Hynes” legislature (The Brooklyn Paper)

After Bitter Election Loss, Charles Hynes Shredded His Office Documents : Sources (The New York Observer)

The New York State legislature, that swamp of corruption, is hoping to create an independent commission to investigate the prosecutorial misconduct of New York’s state prosecutors. The commission members would be able to recommend disciplinary actions against prosecutors engaging in "improper activity or whose performance displays a degree of incompetence not suited for the office," The Brooklyn Paper reported.

The possibility that the state's district attorneys have become corrupt is too much for the state's attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, to handle. The only way hot political corruption cases like this can be handled is to outsource it to an incompetent commission, which Gov. Andrew Cuomo can then disband if the political heat becomes too much to bear, like what he did with the do-nothing Moreland Commission.

The scandal with Brooklyn D.A. Hynes is only coming up now, because Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is investigating JCOPE ethics complaints and Moreland Commission corruption files. Were it not for Mr. Bharara's ongoing campaign to clean up government corruption, the city's lazy Department of Investigations would not have investigated any of the corrupt district attorneys in New York's five boroughs, much less D.A. Hynes. Naturally, there are rumors being shared amonst activists that the DOI probe into former D.A. Hynes may have been politically-motivated, like all the other take-downs in New York City. Of course, nothing is going to happen in respect of this proposed district attorney investigation commission, unless Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver blesses this commission, which voters know he won't, because Speaker Silver has a long history of enabling corruption all across New York state. But some New York City-based bloggers and activists privately wonder if just the fear of the idea of this commission will scare the crap out of some corrupt local district attorneys, like Manhattan D.A. Cy Vance, who many good government reform activists believe avoids prosecuting political corruption cases.

Besides Mr. Vance, the new Brooklyn district attorney, Ken Thompson, also avoids thorny political cases. For example, Mr. Thompson failed to examine the slimy circumstances of how one of the mayor's loyal political supporters was allowed to basically get out jail for free. The long-time Queens district attorney, Richard Brown, refused to find any wrong-doing when the New York Police Department kidnapped and held prisoner the whistleblower Adrian Schoolcraft in the psychiatric ward of a Queens hospital.

In New York, whenever political or law enforcement corruption becomes so bad, the only way the corrupt justice system handles it is by outsourcing the investigation to an independent commission or to an independent prosecutor, because the district attorney, attorney general, or federal prosecutor with normal jurisdiction doesn't want the political blowback from these kinds of investigations. Look at how the Staten Island district attorney appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the corrupt Working Families Party ; the Staten Island D.A. didn't want to touch that investigation. These kinds of cases are TOO HOT for the normal investigators to handle. Investigators race to outsource probes to others, who can either afford to take the political heat or who are too stupid to know the difference. But if only voters could see why these investigations have to get outsourced, then that would show voters how the justice system truly has become corrupt, because there should be no reason why there should be a "tale of two justice systems" for political corruption.

Meanwhile, as Albany considers more and more layers of supervision over the state's crumbling law enforcement apparatus, it was reported this week that Mayor Bill de Blasio has yet to appoint a chair to the city's Civilian Complaint Review Board, a do-nothing oversight panel meant to push papers about in respect of civilian complaints against the NYPD, in spite of the fact that the NYPD appear to be openly engaging in racing profiling in respect of the low-level marijuana arrests that police are making under the de Blasio administration.

Monday, June 9, 2014

Still no arrest by AG Schneiderman in "dirty DA" Hynes corruption probe

A stunning probe by the city’s Department of Investigations revealed last week that former Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes may have used drug money to pay more than $200,000 to the political Svengali Matz, and that was just in 2013.

RELATED


The state’s top cop is looking into possible criminal charges against former Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes. (Attorney General Eric Schneiderman subpoenas former Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes aides in state theft probe, says source * The New York Daily News)

Hynes's campaign committee paid over $600,000 to The Advance Group. (NYC : News & Analysis)

How broken is the system ? You have the normally do-nothing state Attorney General begrudgingly have to investigate corruption by one of his very own former district attorneys. This is the very tip of the iceberg of how corrupt the justice system is. Since this story first broke last week, police have raided housing projects for youth gang members not yet committing any crimes, but here you have the normally do-nothing city Department of Investigations and the press conclusively prove that Charles Hynes used the seized assets from drug deals gone bad to pay for one of his campaign consultants, and still there is no arrest.

But the true booby prize is that we are only hearing about how corrupt former Brooklyn DA Hynes is because he was unfortunate enough to get on the wrong side of the mayor and his supporters, thus making the Hynes take-down all about dirty, vindictive politics -- and not actually about reforming the broken justice system. At this rate, the only way to expose the other dirty district attorneys, is to elect a mayor, who is their sworn political enemy. This is the best we can expect from the current state of the broken political system.

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

With Haggerty seeking retrial and Hynes using drug money for campaign consultants, will campaign finance laws ever be reformed ?

State Sen. Malcolm Smith goes to trial for trying to buy the GOP ballot line just days after Gov. Andrew Cuomo "secures" the Working Families ballot line.

A strange convergence of four different election scandals is taking place this week. Former Queens GOP operative John Haggerty, Jr., requested a new trial on technical ground for stealing $750,000 from former Mayor Michael Bloomberg during the 2009 mayoral election as it was revealed that former Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes was using the seized criminal assets in the District Attorney's Office to pay for a campaign consultant.

As if it couldn't get any worse, two politicians are being treated different by prosecutors for essentially having done the same thing.

Why is State Sen. Malcolm Smith facing a corruption and bribery trial for making deals and proposing bribes in order to make a "deal" to get his name on the GOP ballot line in last year's mayoral race, at the same time that newspapers widely reported that Gov. Andrew Cuomo made his own "deal," including offering to contribute to a possible $10 million election fund, to get on the Working Families Party ballot line on this year's gubernatorial race ?

The pattern of corruption in the Haggerty-Hynes cases show how political operatives and elected officials themselves are so starved for corrupt campaign finance money that they will go to great lengths to misuse other people's money. Mr. Haggerty was already convicted in a trial, whereas Mr. Hynes is said to be awaiting possible criminal charges. While State Sen. Smith faces trial over his efforts to buy the GOP line, there's not even a hint that Gov. Cuomo may face criminal charges for trying to possibly buying his way onto the WFP line.

The apparent similarities in these cases, but the unequal application of the law, seem to point to even added corruption in how prosecutors decide which politicos to charge with election and campaign finance crimes.

Monday, June 2, 2014

Charles Hynes Used Seized Drug Money To Pay Campaign Consultant

If the former Brooklyn D.A. was improperly using money seized from drug dealers and other criminals to pay a political consultant, what does that say about the political consultants he paid through his campaign committee ?

Charles Hynes photo charles-hynes_zps067ecc4d.jpg

The disgraced former Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes is accused of paying the consultant Mortimer Matz over $200,000 in payments from the seized money from drug dealers and other criminals. By law, the seized money controlled by the district attorney's office can only be used for law enforcement purposes, The New York Times reported.

Since Mr. Hynes's campaign activities were benefiting from the political consultations being paid for by these illegals payments, Mr. Hynes was not just allegedly engaging in public corruption, but he may have also been engaging in campaign finance corruption by failing to declare these illegal services to the state's Board of Elections.

Hynes's campaign committee paid over $600,000 to The Advance Group.

Select Schedule F reports filed in 2013 by Mr. Hynes' official campaign committee with the Board of Elections show that Mr. Hynes' use of seized drug money to pay Mr. Matz allowed his campaign committee to make rich payments to still yet other political consultants. For instance, The Advance Group, a lobbying and political campaign consulting firm operated by Scott Levenson, who is already facing multiple investigations into electioneering and campaign finance improprieties, was paid over $600,000 in declared consulting and campaign mailing expenditures from Mr. Hynes' campaign committee in 2013. Will the illegal use of seized money for campaign activities render a shroud of criminal scrutiny on Mr. Hynes' political campaign committee expenditures ?

If it is possible for one of New York City's district attorneys to dip into the seized criminal assets for political campaign spending, does that mean that the city's other powerful district attorneys, including Cy Vance, will be investigated, too ?

2014-XX-XX Charles Hynes - NYC Department of Investigation Misconduct Report

2013-07-Xx Charles Hynes - Nysboe July Periodic Report - Schedule f Expenditures

2013-01-Xx Charles Hynes - Nysboe January Periodic Report - Schedule f Expenditures

2013-XX-XX Charles Hynes - NYSBOE 32 DAY PRE PRIMARY - Schedule F Expenditures

2013-XX-XX Charles Hynes - NYSBOE 11 DAY PRE PRIMARY - Schedule F Expenditures

2013-Xx-xx Charles Hynes - Nysboe 10 Day Post Primary - Schedule f Expenditures