3 NJ mayors, lawmakers arrested in corruption case

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By DAVID PORTER, Associated Press Writer David Porter, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 7 mins ago

NEWARK, N.J. – The mayors of three New Jersey cities, two state legislators and several rabbis were among more than 40 people arrested Thursday in a sweeping corruption investigation that began as a probe into an international money laundering ring that trafficked in goods as diverse as human organs and fake designer handbags.

Among 44 people arrested Thursday were Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano III, Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell, Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini, state Assemblyman L. Harvey Smith and state Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt.

Ridgefield Mayor Anthony Suarez, who is also an attorney, is charged with agreeing to accept an illegal $10,000 cash payment for his legal defense fund.

The number of arrests was noteworthy even for New Jersey, a state that has seen more than 130 public officials plead guilty or be convicted of corruption since 2001.

"New Jersey's corruption problem is one of the worst, if not the worst, in the nation," said Ed Kahrer, who heads the FBI's white collar and public corruption investigation division. "Corruption is a cancer that is destroying the core values of this state."

Gov. Jon Corzine reacted to the probe Thursday morning by saying, "any corruption is unacceptable — anywhere, anytime, by anybody. The scale of corruption we're seeing as this unfolds is simply outrageous and cannot be tolerated."

FBI agents seized documents from Community Affairs Commissioner Joseph Doria's home and office Thursday, but federal officials would not say whether the former Democratic state senator from Bayonne would face criminal charges.

Doria's office did not return messages for comment Thursday.

In separate money laundering complaints, several rabbis from Brooklyn and New Jersey were charged with offenses ranging from the trafficking of kidneys from Israeli donors to laundering proceeds from selling fake Gucci and Prada bags.

Van Pelt is accused of accepting $10,000 from a cooperating government witness posing as a developer who sought help in getting permits for a project in Ocean County.

Smith, the Jersey City Council President, and several other current and former Jersey City public officials also are accused of accepting money to help the fake developer gain permits and approvals.

Beldini, 74, is charged with conspiracy to commit extortion by taking $20,000 in illegal campaign contributions. Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy said Thursday the charges were "a little shocking."

"I have full faith in Leona," Healy said. "She's a good friend of mine — was and will be."

Cammarano, 32, who won a runoff election last month, is charged with accepting $25,000 in cash bribes from an undercover cooperating witness. Elwell is charged with taking $10,000.

Joseph Hayden, an attorney representing Cammarano, said his client "is innocent of these charges. He intends to fight them with all his strength until he proves his innocence."

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the investigation initially focused, with the help of the cooperating witness, on the money laundering network that operated between Brooklyn, Deal, N.J. and Israel. The network is alleged to have laundered tens of millions of dollars through charities controlled by rabbis in New York and New Jersey.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said he has heard of the story but knows nothing of kidneys being sold by Israelis.

The investigation widened to include official corruption in July 2007 when the cooperating witness approached public officials in Hudson County posing as a developer seeking to build in the Jersey City area.

Hoboken's waterfront has proven to be an especially lucrative piece of real estate across from midtown Manhattan. Developers have put up dozens of buildings in the last 15 years in the mile-square city. It had a prime view on July 4 of fireworks over the Hudson River.

The fears that the city was being overdeveloped has become a hot topic during elections among candidates.

In secretly recorded conversations outlined in the complaint against Cammarano, the candidate made it clear to prospective campaign donors that he was a friend of developers.

A cooperating witness posing as a developer who was donating $5,000 to the campaign told Cammarano just days before the mayoral election that he wanted to make sure he had his support with "some properties we're working on." Cammarano is quoted as responding, "I'll be there."

In Deal, Mike Winnick of the Elberon section of Long Branch was praying inside the Deal Synagogue when it was raided by FBI, IRS and Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office agents.

"Everyone was looking at each other, like, `What's going on here?' " he said.

Winnick said four FBI agents escorted a rabbi from the synagogue into his office and blocked the doorway.

Winnick said he left shortly afterward.

Nearby, FBI and IRS agents removed several boxes from the Deal Yeshiva, a school that educates the children of Sephardic Jews.

Busloads carrying those arrested were brought to the FBI's Newark field office Thursday morning. One agent slowly walked an elderly rabbi into the building as another covered his face with a felt hat.

___

Angela Delli Santi and Beth DeFalco in Trenton, Wayne Parry in Deal, Samantha Henry and Victor Epstein in Newark and Larry Neumeister in New York contributed to this story.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090723/ap_on_re_us/us_nj_corruption_arrests

[samanthajane13]

Officials lambast NJ corruption after 44 arrested
By DAVID PORTER, Associated Press Writer David Porter, Associated Press Writer – 32 mins ago

NEWARK, N.J. – Officials are decrying political corruption in New Jersey after more than 40 people, among them rabbis and elected officeholders, were arrested in an investigation in which some were accused of laundering tens of millions of dollars and of black-market trafficking of kidneys and fake Gucci handbags.

The 44 arrests Thursday were a remarkable number even for New Jersey, where more than 130 public officials have pleaded guilty or have been convicted of corruption since 2001.

"New Jersey's corruption problem is one of the worst, if not the worst, in the nation," said Ed Kahrer, who heads the FBI's white-collar and public corruption division. "Corruption is a cancer that is destroying the core values of this state."

Gov. Jon Corzine said: "The scale of corruption we're seeing as this unfolds is simply outrageous and cannot be tolerated."

The arrests were headline news in Israel on Friday morning, with the front pages of all three of the country's mass-circulation dailies featuring pictures of bearded ultra-Orthodox Jews being led away by law enforcement officials.

Micky Rosenfeld, a spokesman for Israel's national police force, said Friday that Israeli police were not involved in the investigation. He would not comment further.

Federal prosecutors in the U.S. said the investigation focused on a money laundering network that operated between Brooklyn, N.Y.; Deal, N.J.; and Israel. The network is alleged to have laundered tens of millions of dollars through Jewish charities controlled by rabbis in New York and New Jersey.

Prosecutors then used an informant in that investigation to help them go after corrupt politicians. The informant — a real estate developer charged with bank fraud three years ago — posed as a crooked businessman and paid a string of public officials tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to get approvals for buildings and other projects in New Jersey, authorities said.

Among the 44 people arrested were the mayors of Hoboken, Ridgefield and Secaucus, Jersey City's deputy mayor, and two state assemblymen. A member of the governor's cabinet resigned after agents searched his home, though he was not arrested. All but one of the officeholders are Democrats.

Also, five rabbis from New York and New Jersey — two of whom lead congregations in Deal — were accused of laundering millions of dollars, some of it from the sale of counterfeit goods and bankruptcy fraud, authorities said.

Others arrested included building and fire inspectors, city planning officials and utilities officials, all of them accused of using their positions to further the corruption.

The politicians arrested were not accused of any involvement in the money laundering or the trafficking in human organs and counterfeit handbags.

Hours after FBI agents seized documents from his home and office, New Jersey Community Affairs Commissioner Joseph Doria resigned. Federal officials would not say whether he would be charged. Doria did not return calls for comment.

Authorities did not identify the informant, described in court papers as a person "charged in a federal criminal complaint with bank fraud in or about May 2006." But the date matches up with an investigation that led to charges against Solomon Dwek, the son of a Deal rabbi.

The younger Dwek was charged at the time in connection with a bounced $25 million check he deposited in a bank's drive-through window. He has denied the charges. Dwek's lawyer did not immediately return a call for comment Thursday.

Most of the defendants facing corruption charges were released on bail. The money laundering defendants faced bail between $300,000 and $3 million, and most were ordered to submit to electronic monitoring.

Among those ensnared by the informant was Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano III, prosecutors said. The 32-year-old Cammarano, who won a runoff election last month, was accused of accepting money from the developer at a Hoboken diner.

"There's the people who were with us, and that's you guys," the complaint quotes Cammarano saying. "There's the people who climbed on board in the runoff. They can get in line. ... And then there are the people who were against us the whole way. ... They get ground into powder."

Cammarano was accused of accepting $25,000 in cash bribes. His attorney Joseph Hayden said his client is "innocent of these charges. He intends to fight them with all his strength until he proves his innocence."

___

Associated Press Writers Angela Delli Santi and Beth DeFalco in Trenton, N.J.; Wayne Parry in Deal, N.J.; Samantha Henry and Victor Epstein in Newark, N.J.; Larry Neumeister in New York and Matti Friedman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090724/ap_on_re_us/us_nj_corruption_arrests

[samanthajane13]

New Jersey's Corruption Scandal: The Israeli Connection
By MATTHEW KALMAN / JERUSALEM Matthew Kalman / Jerusalem – 54 mins ago

The mass arrests in the New Jersey corruption scandal last week were big news - in Israel. Images of prominent rabbis and Jewish businessmen being cuffed and arrested after morning prayers filled the front pages under headlines trumpeting the discovery of the "Jewish laundry" used to bribe prominent New Jersey officials allegedly using Israeli charities. In particular, Israeli commentators seized on the connection between several of those arrested and prominent figures in Shas, the ultra-orthodox Sephardi Torah Guardians Party, founded by the octogenarian Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who remains its spiritual leader.

Among those arrested on July 23 were Rabbi Eliahu Ben Haim and Rabbi Edmund Nahum, who are reportedly close to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and his son, Rabbi David Yosef. Ben Haim and Nahum were allegedly major fundraisers for Shas and Yosef family networks of educational institutions. According to a report on Israeli television, Rabbi David Yosef was also said to have been the target of Solomon Dwek, the FBI's chief informant, who asked the rabbi to help him launder a check for $25,000. David Yosef reportedly declined.

Leaders of Shas, which won 11 seats in the Knesset and is the fourth largest member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government, told TIME the party has no connection to the scandal. Roei Lachmanovich, spokesman for Shas Party leader Eli Yishai, told TIME that fundraising by the American rabbis for Sephardi institutions in Israel did not mean they were connected to Shas. He said that Shas institutions - including the rabbinical schools, or yeshivas - received their budget directly from the Israeli government and denied that Shas had been involved in any money-laundering or illegal activity. Furthermore, he said that Rabbi David Yosef was not a member of Shas and did not represent the party. "Besides the fact that he is Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's son, he has no formal connection to the Shas organization," said Lachmanovich.

One of those arrested was a Brooklyn man, Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, who was charged with trading in human organs. In Jerusalem's ultra-orthodox community this week, Rosenbaum, who claimed to be a real estate dealer, was described as a macher (fixer) who assisted renal patients in finding appropriate medical treatment in the United States. According to the official complaint, however, Rosenbaum planned to give an Israeli donor $10,000 and then charge the client who requested the kidney $160,000. The payment would be laundered through what Rosenbaum described first as a "congregation," then as a charity. According to published reports, Rosenbaum ran the Brooklyn branch of Kav Lachayim, a charity for sick children that was once supported by convicted financier Bernie Madoff.

The Shas media reacted to the entire scandal with countercharges of anti-Semitism. Yitzhak Kakun, editor of the Shas newspaper Yom Le'Yom told the Jerusalem Post: "The FBI purposely attempted to arrest as many rabbis as possible at once in an attempt to humiliate them." Meanwhile, Nissim Ze'ev, a Shas Knesset member, said, "The U.S. police are trying to make it seem as though there is some kind of Jewish mafia."

This is not the first time, however, that the Shas party has been embroiled in a corruption controversy. Two Shas ministers have been convicted on corruption charges in recent years. Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies in Jerusalem, explains that some parts of the ultra-orthodox community tend to disregard secular law, despite a tenacious adherence to the minutest detail of Jewish religious ritual. Says Halevi: "You have a kind of borderless community that in its best expressions maintains international charity efforts that are second to none. But the dark side of this is a mentality that often too easily slides into rationalizations for acts that cannot be rationalized, with the idea that the end justifies the means. Here we are raising money for charitable institutions, and therefore we're allowed to cut corners." Halevi adds: "There have been other examples in the past of drug-running happening under cover of certain religious institutions here. There have been too many examples of abuse in the past."


http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090728/wl_time/08599191310900

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:flamemad::flamemad::flamemad::flamemad::flamemad: :flamemad::flamemad:

[samanthajane13]

NJ Political Figure in Scandal Found Dead

JERSEY CITY, N.J. (July 29) — A political consultant who was one of 44 people arrested last week in New Jersey's massive political corruption scandal has been found dead in his apartment.

Hudson County prosecutor Edward DeFazio says a relative found the body of 61-year-old Jack Shaw in Jersey City and called police Tuesday evening.

Federal prosecutors had accused Shaw of taking $10,000 in bribes from a government informant and proposing the cooperating witness make a $10,000 campaign contribution to an unnamed Jersey City official.

DeFazio told The Jersey Journal newspaper of Jersey City the death doesn't appear to be a homicide. He says an autopsy will determine the cause of death.


http://news.aol.com/article/nj-political-consultant-jack-shaw-found/594130

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Indicted NJ mayor resigns after 3 weeks on job
By BETH DeFALCO and SAMANTHA HENRY, Associated Press Writers Beth Defalco And Samantha Henry, Associated Press Writers – 57 mins ago

HOBOKEN, N.J. – Mayor Peter Cammarano III resigned Friday, just three weeks after taking office and a week after vowing to stay in office and fight federal corruption charges against him.

Cammarano, who won a June runoff election, was snared last week in a sweeping federal corruption probe that resulted in the arrests of 44 people, including rabbis and dozens of public officials.

The 32-year-old — Hoboken's youngest mayor — sent a letter to the city clerk on Friday saying his resignation was effective at noon. City Council President Dawn Zimmer entered the city council chamber to a standing ovation and was sworn in moments later as the city's first female acting mayor.

"I apologize to the residents of Hoboken for the disruption and disappointment this case has caused," Cammarano said in his resignation letter.

Cammarano, an election-law attorney, is accused of accepting $25,000 in bribes in exchange for help on a purported high-rise building project in the city. He is the second elected official to resign in the wake of the arrests.

In the letter and through his attorney, he reiterated his innocence and said he still intends to fight the charges.

"It became clear in the past six or seven days that, given the controversy surrounding his case, he could not perform his duties," said Cammarano attorney Joseph Hayden. "It was injurious to Hoboken government for him to stay in there, not to mention the fact that the controversy was a burden on his family."

Gov. Jon Corzine had praised Cammarano as a rising star in the Democratic Party. But that turned to disgust after Cammarano's arrest and Corzine announced on Thursday that the mayor would resign.

Zimmer, who lost the June 10 runoff election to Cammarano by 161 votes, said he called her Friday morning and wished her luck.

"I am committed to open, honest government and to set a new direction for Hoboken," she said.

A special election will be held in November to fill the remainder of Cammarano's term; Zimmer said she plans to run for it.

Cammarano's arrest came at a tough time for Hoboken, which has become a bedroom community of sorts for Manhattan professionals. Financial industry layoffs have hit the city hard, flooding the real-estate market with homes for sale or rent.

Residents seemed relieved Cammarano is leaving office. Many have protested outside the mayor's home and at City Hall with signs that said "Shame on You" and "Resign."

Dinorah Vargas, 50, a lifelong Hoboken resident, said she didn't vote for Cammarano and was hopeful his resignation would be the start of reform in the one-square-mile waterfront town that served as the setting for "On the Waterfront," the 1954 Marlon Brando film about crookedness on the docks.

"I'm glad it's over. We have to move forward, and I think it's going to be a different city," said Vargas, who didn't vote for Cammarano.

Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell, who was among those arrested in the corruption sweep, resigned earlier this week.

___

Beth DeFalco reported from Trenton, N.J.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090731/ap_on_re_us/us_nj_corruption_arrests_mayor