The answer is in criminal complaints filed Thursday by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman against 10 defendants with various ties to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office, including former close aide Joseph Percoco and SUNY Polytechnic Institute President Alain Kaloyeros.
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Joseph Percoco, Cuomo’s former executive deputy secretary and one of his most loyal advisers, and Todd Howe, a longtime family confidante, were among the nine people named in the complaint which was filed in U.S. federal court in Manhattan, according to the New York Post.
Mr. Howe worked as a consultant to SUNY Polytechnic while its affiliated nonprofits awarded contracts and funding to companies that paid tens of thousands of dollars in income to Mr. Percoco, according to Mr. Percoco’s financial disclosure statements.
According to prosecutors, Percoco asked for the $315,000 clams from an energy company looking to build a power plant upstate as well as a developer for a state-funded project.
Carl P. Paladino, the 2010 Republican candidate for governor and a frequent Cuomo critic, said the governor’s situation is dire.
That didn’t stop Percoco and Howe to continue soliciting payments from CPV, according to federal prosecutors. One involves Percoco and Peter Galbraith Kelly, the head of the Maryland-based Competitive Power Ventures, a company that has donated richly to the governor’s campaigns.
Having convicted former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos on corruption charges, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said that the case goes “to the core of how I think state government operates”. The firms also are big Cuomo political donors.
The document also names two executives at COR Development as well as Buffalo developer Louis Ciminelli, whose company LPCiminelli stood to make millions off Cuomo’s efforts to revitalize the upstate economy.
Cuomo escaped direct culpability on the corruption charges facing Howe, Percoco and seven others stemming from his administration’s efforts.
According to the indictment, Howe organized the bribes Kelly made to Percoco, who leaned on CPV to hire his wife, Lisa Toscana-Percoco. “We are confident that a jury that fairly considers the facts and correctly applies the law will find him not guilty”. Kaloyeros’ lawyer, Michael Miller, said his client was innocent.
Earlier today, Cuomo released a statement in which he said, “I have zero tolerance for abuse of the public trust from anyone”.
“It turns out that the state legislature does not have a monopoly on crass corruption in New York”, Bharara said.
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“This prosecution, based on information provided by someone of utterly unreliable credibility, seeks to criminalize conduct that the Supreme Court of the United States recently found to be not unlawful”, he said in an apparent reference to the case of former Virginia Bob McDonnell. As part of the alleged scheme, Kaloyeros, who exercised effectively unilateral control over the bidding process, forwarded a solicitation from a rival construction company to Nicolla six months before the issuance of a state RFP. SUNY suspended Kaloyeros without pay, and he is expected to appear before a federal judge in Manhattan at 3:30 p.m., along with Percoco and Kelly.
