Like Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Husam Ahmad saw his opportunities and took ’em, an indictment this week suggests — opportunities spawned by New York’s laws and corrupt political culture.
Manhattan DA Cy Vance hit Ahmad, 12 others and nine firms with charges including bribing officials, making illegal campaign donations and defrauding the city’s Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprise program.
Prosecutors say he sidestepped limits on campaign donations by using “straw” donors. Hmm: Restaurateur Harendra Singh testified that Mayor Bill de Blasio urged him to do likewise — and he did. Admitted cop-briber Jona Rechnitz also used that trick. Taxi-trade boss Fernando Mateo, too.
And all in expectation of favors from City Hall. (You thought city campaign-finance laws were meant to curb corruption? Ha!)
Another scheme involved payoffs (contracts, gifts, etc.) to a city official who leaked inside info to Ahmad and various firms. The info gave them an edge in bidding for city contracts, which, says Vance, led to “hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud.”
Of course, de Blasio’s whole mayoralty has been embroiled in bribery, though prosecutors say it’s too hard to prove it in court. Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s former top aide, Joe Percoco, was found guilty of soliciting payoffs, while another top Cuomo official goes on trial in June.
Corruption charges have sent scores of state legislators and other New York pols to prison in recent years. Ex-legislative leaders Shelly Silver and Dean Skelos face retrials after their convictions were tossed on technical grounds.
Ahmad is also accused of abusing the city’s MWBE program by hiding his ownership of a firm, Simco, so as not to jeopardize its MWBE status. That allowed the company to win millions more in contracts “it would otherwise not be entitled to.”
This is far from the first scam of an MWBE program: The rules virtually invite companies to game the system.
Maybe Ahmad & Co. decided that corruption is just the way business is done in New York — since New York’s pols sure seem to like it that way.
