Sunday, May 23, 2010

Mafia infiltrated East Side Access project

From the NY Times:

On most weekdays in recent years, giant tractor-trailer and dump trucks loaded with tons of rocks, earth and sludge have been rumbling out of the Sunnyside, Queens, railyards in low gear and turning onto Northern Boulevard.

It is lucrative work, especially in an economy where there has been a substantial downturn in construction. But the company doing the hauling, New York Dirt Contracting, a subcontractor that has been paid more than $2 million for its work on the project since 2007, is winding down its operation, though the undertaking is far from completed.

That is because the city’s Business Integrity Commission has concluded that the company has been too cozy with organized crime figures and revoked its authority to do business in the five boroughs, an action that was endorsed by a State Supreme Court justice last month.

The decision was based in part on affidavits and wiretaps that detail a clandestine meeting in a nursing home between company officials and an influential mob figure, who boasted that he had helped them get a contract on another huge public works job in the city and arranged for them to dump debris from it in a Westchester cemetery. The company’s owner denied wrongdoing.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nothing surprises me anymore. The vinnies already were caught working on the WTC site. It seems like public works projects attract the mob like bees to honey.

Anonymous said...

Don't forget to check for buried corpses.