AMERICA:The scale of a corruption and money laundering investigation in New Jersey is unprecedented, writes DENIS STAUNTON.
THE STATE that was the setting for The Sopranosis no stranger to political corruption scandals but even New Jersey was shocked on Thursday when three mayors, two assemblymen and five rabbis were among 44 people arrested in a massive FBI sting.
An investigation into an international money laundering racket involving everything from fake Gucci handbags to human kidneys grew into an inquiry of public officials who accepted cash bribes in diners, living rooms and car parks where the money was sometimes stuffed into breakfast cereal boxes.
There were so many defendants that the cars carrying them to Newark’s FBI headquarters were parked four deep outside and buses were laid on to transport them to court.
Acting US attorney Ralph Marra, the prosecutor in charge of the case, said it highlighted the enduring grip of political corruption on New Jersey, where 130 public officials have pleaded guilty or been convicted of corruption since 2001. “For these defendants, corruption was a way of life,” he said.
“They existed in an ethics free zone. And they exploited giant loopholes in the state’s campaign contribution rules.”
The man at the centre of the sting was Solomon Dwek, a property developer and philanthropist who was a prominent member of the small, Syrian Jewish community in Deal, on the Jersey Shore. When he was arrested in 2006 for passing a bad cheque for $25 million (€17.5m), Dwek agreed to wear a wire for FBI officers investigating a money laundering operation involving a group of rabbis in Brooklyn with links to Israel and Switzerland.
According to court documents, criminals wishing to launder money from the sale of fake luxury goods and other scams could write a cheque to charities run by the rabbis. In return, they would receive an equivalent sum in cash – minus a “handling fee” of 5 or 10 per cent.
Dwek allegedly used his links to the rabbis to launder $3 million in cheques between June 2007 and July this year.
In the course of the investigation, Dwek came into contact with Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, who allegedly ran a trade in black market human kidneys.
According to prosecutors, Levy bought each kidney for $10,000, usually from vulnerable donors in Israel and sold them in the US for $160,000.
Dwek told Levy that his uncle needed a new kidney and Levy, who described himself as a “matchmaker”, explained how the scheme worked.
“Let me explain to you one thing. It’s illegal to buy or sell organs. So you cannot buy it. What you do is, you’re giving a compensation for the time . . . whatever,” he said, according to the FBI complaint.
One of Dwek’s money laundering contacts introduced him to a building inspector in Jersey City, who introduced him in turn to another city official, Maher Khalil.
Khalil, who is accused of accepting $30,000 (€21,000) in bribes from Dwek, set up a series of meetings with local politicians and officials he referred to as “players”.
Posing as a potential developer of high-rise buildings across the state, Dwek wore a wire to meetings with political figures, offering cash bribes – sometimes for political campaigns and sometimes for personal use – in return for help in expediting his projects. FBI surveillance teams followed him, making video recordings of the meetings and of the transfer of cash, usually from the boot of Dwek’s car.
Among those arrested on Thursday was Hoboken’s mayor, Peter Cammarano (32), who took office just over three weeks ago. Hoboken is an affluent, picturesque city of 40,000 across the Hudson from Manhattan.
Cammarano showed no such scruples when confronted with Dwek’s bribes, according to prosecutors, accepting $25,000 in cash – with the most recent payment made just last week.
“I promise you,” Cammarano is alleged to have told Dwek, “you’re going to be treated like a friend.” Most of Dwek’s meetings with Cammarano were at a Hoboken diner during the mayor’s campaign for election and the Democrat allegedly told his new friend that, once in office, he would apply a strict pecking order to developers seeking help.
“In this election, hopefully we, we, we, you know, we get to the point where I’m sworn in on July 1st and we’re breaking down the world into three categories at that point,” he told Dwek, according to the official complaint.
“There’s the people who were with us, and that’s you guys. 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 . . . They get ground into powder.” Weysan Dun, head of the FBI’s Newark office, described the corruption and money laundering case as unprecedented in its scope but sought to play down the significance of the identity of those arrested.
“The fact that we arrested a number of rabbis this morning does not make this a religiously motivated case. Nor does the fact that we arrested political figures make this a politically motivated case,” he said.
“This case is not about politics. It is certainly not about religion. It is about crime and corruption.”
The case may not be about religion but it could have profound political consequences for New Jersey’s first-term Democratic governor Jon Corzine, who faces re-election later this year. His Republican challenger is Chris Christie, a former prosecutor who launched the investigation two years ago that led to this week’s arrests.
Christie declined to say if Corzine, one of whose senior officials resigned after investigators raided his home on Thursday, should step down, protesting that politics was the last thing on his mind as he watched the arrests.
“I can only think of it in terms of what it means in a law enforcement perspective,” he said. “There will be others who can judge this politically.”