Monday, February 15, 2010

Inspector General joins Aqueduct probe

From the NY Post:

Federal investigators have asked the state's anti-corruption watchdog to help with their probe into Gov. Paterson's selection of a politically wired consortium to run the Aqueduct slots "racino," The Post has learned.

Investigators from US Attorney Preet Bharara's office in Manhattan met secretly with state Inspector General Joseph Fisch on Monday about probing the state's preliminary award to Aqueduct Entertainment Group -- whose partners include powerhouse Queens minister and ex-Rep. Floyd Flake.

"They [feds] met with Fisch Monday to discuss the investigation and to talk about his office's helping out, about dividing up the responsibilities for the investigation," said a source close to the federal probe.

That strategy session came three days before Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) urged the state inspector general to investigate the Paterson administration's role in pushing AEG to operate 4,500 video lottery terminals at Aqueduct.

Word of the mushrooming AEG investigation clashes with Paterson's assertion that a federal subpoena issued to the Lottery Division earlier this week targeted a Queens nonprofit group -- New Direction Local Development Corp. -- and not the AEG selection. New Direction has ties to Flake, Rep. Greg Meeks and state Senate President Malcolm Smith -- all from southeast Queens, where the Aqueduct track is.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

the State investigating the State corrupters is a joke.

i smell cover -up.

Anonymous said...

Why doesn't anybody talk to CB10?

ew-3 said...

where is the state AG on this?

Anonymous said...

CB10 has been saying since the get go the process used by the state on this sucked.