« FCR considers "world's tallest prefab steel structure" for first affordable tower; big savings, but promised union jobs, tax revenues lost, new risks | Main | Forest City Ratner to Slap Together Prefab Tower at Atlantic Yards »
March 17, 2011
Kruger crony leaned on me for vote: pol
NY Post
by Rich Calder and Dan Mangan
A Forest City Ratner executive whose cozy relationship with state Sen. Carl Kruger is featured in a new criminal complaint against the Brooklyn politician personally lobbied a Yonkers councilman hours before a controversial vote that later led to bribery charges against a councilwoman.
Yonkers Council Majority Leader John Murtagh Jr. said FCR Vice President Bruce Bender leaned on him in 2006 to change his expected vote opposing a controversial FCR development. The meeting was set up hours before a Yonkers council vote by then-Yonkers Republican Party chairman Zehy Jereis.
Bender, who has not been accused of wrongdoing, was the point man for FCR’s efforts to win the Yonkers council’s approval for the $630 million 81-acre “Ridge Hill” retail, commercial and residential development there.
Murtagh told The Post that Jereis called him “hours before the vote” and asked him to meet at a Yonkers Starbucks.
When he arrived, Jereis, who was with Bender, warned Murtagh that Councilwoman Sandy Annabi “is going to vote ‘yes,’ so this is going to pass, and it would help me politically if I vote in favor of it also,” Murtagh recalled.
Murtagh said he refused, adding, “I don’t make decisions like that, to do so would be political suicide.“ Jereis in Oct. 2006 was given a one-year, $60,000 real estate consulting contract by FCR in what prosecutors claim was a payoff by the company for getting Annabi to drop her opposition to the development.
Jereis had no experience in the real estate business and never submitted monthly work reports to FCR until March 2007 when the feds began dropping subpoenas as part of the Yonkers investigation, prosecutors said.
Last year, Annabi was charged by federal authorities with accepting more than $166,000 in bribes to vote in favor of Ridge Hill and another Yonkers development.
Related coverage...
Atlantic Yards Report, Post: Yonkers Council Member says Bender pushed him to change vote in Ridge Hill case
In Kruger crony leaned on me for vote: pol, the New York Post continues chipping away at the relationship between developer Forest City Ratner and scandal-plagued state Senator Carl Kruger, again looking at the Ridge Hill case in Yonkers.
...And this time, unlike in an article earlier this week, the Post completes the story, explaining that Jereis got a consulting job from Forest City in an apparent reward, even as the developer and its staff evaded any charges.
Posted by eric at March 17, 2011 9:40 AM