The Feds Keep an Eye on the Democratic Circus

The Feds Keep an Eye on the Democratic Circus

By Yonkers Confidential

The Yonkers 2011 mayoral race is upon us, and the democratic candidates are very colorful characters, to say the least.

City Council President Chuck Lesnick is a victim of his own making. Having distanced himself from the man who controls the Yonkers democratic committee’s nominating votes, County Legislator Ken Jenkins, he paid the price last night by being trounced by Jenkins’’ handpicked spoiler, Assemblyman Mike Spano. His will at least guarantee that Lesnick does not get the support of the party faithful in his quest for the Yonkers mayoralty while also serving to curtail his fledging campaign. This setback, coupled with the recently released information by the Daily News of Lesnick’s direct involvement with the soon-to-be defaults while he was a member of the CIDC board- will likely spell doom for his ‘Don Quixote’ campaign.

Now to Mike Spano, who obviously has a little of Vinny Liebell’s ‘denial syndrome’ in him these days. Allow me to digress.

What do we know about the ongoing Ridge Hill investigation and the Spano family? We know that two of their former employees and closet political allies, attorney Anthony Mangone and political fixer Zehy Jereis, were indicated in January of 2010 by the U.S. Attorney’s Office on various bribery and conspiracy charges related to two development projects that needed the vote of a certain Yonkers legislator (enter indicated council woman Sandy Annabi) to move forward. The windup was that Sandy changed her vote and Mangone, upon indictment, flipped and became a government informant. And Mangone, from what federal investigators are implying, certainly is the big fish they needed who knows where all the bodies are buried. And there is plenty of digging going on these days.

We know that between July and October of 2010, Nick Spano paid $30,000 to a high-end Manhattan defense firm from his Senate campaign fund (although it’s presently unknown how much more was spent from his person accounts or additional campaign expenditures to this firm in the last seven months. But one can surmise that it is a sizable amount to date). A partner at the law firm at the time would say only that he was advising Spano on a number of matters. Yeah, I’ll bet. But the question any reasonable person would ask is: Why would an innocent man spend tens of thousands of dollars to defend himself against criminal charges if he hadn’t committed a crime? Got me. These payments give new meaning to the term guilty conscience. Do you think that Nick’s attorneys were told that he was a target of the present federal investigation? One would think that would be the only reasonable way to explain Nick Spano’s current paranoia.

Now let’s move to Mike Spano and his ongoing “Ridge Hill Issue.” Mike, the trusting and dutiful brother of Nick, was ‘asked’ by his big brother to leave the NYS Assembly in 2005 in order to lobby for the Ridge Hill project, working for the lobbying firm of Patricia Lynch & Associates. Nick needed Sandy Annabi’s vote, and he brought in Mike to engage the fixer, Zehy Jereis. The feds were watching (and listening) on May 31 and again on June 1, 2006 as Mike Spano and Zehy Jereis discussed their strategy in Garden City, NY. Jereis would get paid via a consulting contract with Forest City Ratner for delivering Annabi’s vote. That’s the way the Spano’s liked to do business (remember the consulting contract with the Yonkers Chamber of Commerce that Nick put in place for Zehy which is also part of the current federal investigation?). Now the feds had a charge of Criminal Solicitation against Mike. The feds were watching (and listening) again the next day, June 2, 2006, when Mike Spano introduced Jereis to representatives of Forest City Ratner and the aforementioned consulting deal was officially cut. If Jereis could deliver Annabi’s vote, he would receive $60,000, one-year consulting contract from FCR, and Mike (and Nick) would make a hefty lobbying fee for delivering the prize. The feds now had Mike on the charge of Conspiracy. And when Annabi voted a week later for the Ridge Hill project zoning change, the crime of Bribery was completed.

Bribery is defined as the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of something of value for the purpose of influencing the action of an official in the discharge of his/her public or legal duties. The first element required is Intent. Corrupt intent is the intent to receive a specific benefit in return for the payment. The second element is that a bribe must involve something of value that is used to influence the action or non-action of the recipient. However, the bribe doesn’t necessarily have to be in the form of money. It is sufficient if the receiver gets anything of value to himself/herself from the bribe.

One might ask how Sandy Annabi could be charged with bribe receiving if she wasn’t directly paid by FCR for her vote. But, in reality, she was. Remember that Zehy Jereis kept Annabi on retainer, supplying her with over $160,000 in secret payments since 2004. These payments bought her vote on the Longfellow project and the Ridge Hill vote.

But the more puzzling question that the public should be asking is…

1. Who supplied Zehy Jereis with the $160,000+ that he paid to Annabi? and;
2. Who supplied Zehy Jereis with the money that he used to purchase six two-family homes in Yonkers over the course of less than a decade? And why?

The U.S. Attorney believes that these are questions that can only be answered by either Zehy Jereis or… a certain attorney who is presently acting as a government witness.