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Title: Former Mayor of New Orleans Is Charged in Sweeping Corruption Case (paybacks a bitch)
Source:
NY TIMES
URL Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/19/u ... rleans-indicted-on-corruption-
Published: Jan 19, 2013
Author: CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
Post Date: 2013-01-19 17:33:31 by Murron
Keywords: None
Views: 1475
Comments: 1
Former Mayor of New Orleans Is Charged in Sweeping Corruption Case (paybacks a bitch) NEW ORLEANS — C. Ray Nagin, the former mayor of this city who fulminated against the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina but became for many a symbol of the shortcomings of government himself, was indicted by a federal grand jury on Friday on 21 counts including conspiracy, bribery and money laundering. The indictment detailed a wide-ranging scheme of kickbacks and pay-for-play of a kind not entirely unfamiliar in Louisiana history. Contractors and vendors looking for work with the city would provide the mayor with vacations, big checks and even free granite for his family business. In exchange, they would be awarded lucrative contracts with the city, assistance in defusing community opposition to their projects and even forgiveness of tax penalties. While federal prosecutors have convicted a Louisiana governor, a congressman, a city councilman and members of the school board in the past 15 years alone, this is the first time in New Orleans history that a mayor has been indicted on corruption charges. Mr. Nagin’s lawyer, Robert Jenkins, did not return a call seeking comment. However, he called a local radio talk show in the afternoon, and in response to a question from the host, John McConnell, known as Spud, suggested that the indictment had come as a surprise amid continuing plea negotiations. “Well, we were surprised that the indictment came today because we were still talking with the government and in fact we had talked about meeting next week as well,” he said. But it came as no surprise here in the city, where people had been expecting an indictment for months. Aside from someone identified only as “Businessman A,” the other figures accused of taking part in the conspiracy have either been convicted or pleaded guilty to bribery and corruption charges in the past three years. Even the timing was not a shock, as one of the contractors pleaded guilty in December to paying a $60,000 bribe to “Public Official A” on Jan. 30, 2008, which set off a five-year statute of limitations that would have come to a close this month. While Mr. Nagin, 56, had not been officially named as a target of a federal grand jury, the pretense that Public Official A, who showed up in another plea, could be anyone but the mayor had long since been abandoned on local news reports and in conversations around town. A lawyer for one of the contractors suggested to reporters last month that a person would have to be “the worst investigative reporter on the planet” to not know who Public Official A was. “This has long been a topic of conversation among the political class,” said Edward E. Chervenak, a professor of political science at the University of New Orleans. “When are the feds going to indict Nagin? Everybody’s been waiting for the shoe to fall.” Mr. Nagin came into office in 2002 as an outsider, a reformer out to clean City Hall, a business executive who disdained the old machine politics and was spouting new ideas. It did not take long for him to develop a reputation as a man whose thoughts far outpaced his actions, with ambitious proposals often going nowhere. “It was really a signature problem in his early administration,” said Stephanie Grace, a former columnist for The Times-Picayune who covered his entire career as mayor. “It wasn’t corruption. It was just things just not happening.” While the inability to act was an unfortunate if tolerable trait in a mayor during normal times, it took on tragic dimensions after Hurricane Katrina, when the very existence of the city was in doubt. New Orleanians scattered around the country looked to the mayor for direction on how the city would rebuild and, while Mr. Nagin frequently offered colorful commentary on the frustrations of recovery, he gave little guidance even on crucial issues. “He basically made this decision not to decide,” Ms. Grace said. Still, though billions of dollars in federal money were coming into New Orleans after Katrina, few initially thought of the mayor as corrupt. Not until a series of investigative reports in The Times-Picayune and, in 2010, the guilty plea of Mr. Nagin’s chief technology officer, did that conception start changing. According to the indictment, F.B.I. agents had interviewed Mr. Nagin about kickbacks as far back as 2009. The indictment alleges that the mayor began a kickback scheme in June 2004, with an executive order allowing Greg Meffert, the technology officer, to engage a city vendor in a no-bid contract. The government also asserted that Mr. Nagin received kickbacks from the vendor, a man named Mark St. Pierre, who was convicted in the spring of 2011 on 53 corruption-related charges. Mr. Meffert pleaded guilty in 2010 to taking more than $800,000 in bribes. The kickbacks from Mr. St. Pierre as well as other contractors included trips on private jets to New York, Chicago, Jamaica and Las Vegas, free cellphone service, campaign contributions and payments of tens of thousands of dollars, some in the form of checks or cash and others in monthly wire transfers, the government alleges. The payments from one contractor continued for months after Mr. Nagin left office, in May 2010. In return, those paying bribes received multimillion-dollar contracts for reconstruction projects, as well as smaller property management projects in neighborhoods all over a still-struggling city. Much of the bribery, the government alleges, involved Stone Age, a granite countertop business run by Mr. Nagin and his two sons, Jeremy and Jarin. Company accounts would be used to disguise the payoffs, and some of the payoffs came in the form of several shipments of free granite, or coveted business arrangements with local branches of a “major retail corporation,” reported to be Home Depot. Two family members of Mr. Nagin’s are mentioned in the indictment as having received bribes, though no one else has been charged. The penalties are hefty: if convicted, Mr. Nagin could face 20 years on each of the nine wire fraud counts alone. His arraignment is scheduled for Jan. 31. Mr. Nagin’s indictment also underscores the impatience with corruption and bad governance that set in after the storm, the levee failures and the large-scale mismanagement that followed. Crooked contractors and inept officials at all levels were hardly rare here, but a citizenry that may have shrugged them off the past has shown far less tolerance since 2005. The current mayor, Mitch Landrieu, who lost to Mr. Nagin in 2006 only to win election in 2010 in part because of widespread voter remorse, issued a statement calling Friday “a sad day for the city of New Orleans.” “Public corruption cannot and will not be tolerated,” he added. On Friday morning, Mr. Nagin, who has been living in Texas and who was known internationally during the trying months of fall 2005 for always having something to say about anything, reposted on his Twitter feed a message from someone else, the televangelist Joel Osteen. “You are closest to your victory,” it read, “when you face the greatest opposition.”
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"Nagin, who has been living in Texas and who was known internationally during the trying months of fall 2005 for always having something to say about anything, reposted on his Twitter feed a message from someone else, the televangelist Joel Osteen. “You are closest to your victory,” it read, “when you face the greatest opposition.” FLASHBACK!!! (PAYBACKS A BITCH!!!) NRA Sues New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin New Orleans- "Ray Nagin issued an order to disarm all law-abiding citizens. With no law enforcement or 911 available, he left the victims vulnerable by stripping away their only means of defending themselves and their loved ones." ~ NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre “During a federally declared emergency, he abused his power and abandoned the very people he was sworn to protect. He took away the victims’ freedom and their basic means of self-defense during an ill-fated and perilous time.” ~ NRA- ILA Executive Director Chris W. Cox (“You can't always control who walks into your life but, you can control which window you throw them out of.”)
C. Ray Nagin, the former mayor..., was indicted by a federal grand jury on Friday on 21 counts including conspiracy, bribery and money laundering".
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