Cuomo Associate Has Cooperation Deal With Preet Bharara

Have been waiting post-conventions for some Preet news.

Here is an interesting bit of it:

The corruption probe of Gov. Cuomo’s two longtime associates has taken a critical turn with Todd Howe, onetime lobbyist and longtime Cuomo family confidant, signing a “cooperation agreement’’ with US Attorney Preet Bharara, a source close to the investigation told The Post.

The agreement promises Howe, whose ties to Cuomo go back three decades, “favorable treatment’’ and “leniency’’ in the event that he’s criminally charged, in exchange for full details of his lobbying activities on behalf of several major state contractors with senior Cuomo administration officials.

Those officials include Joseph Percoco, Cuomo’s closest friend and top aide who is currently senior vice president at Madison Square Garden, the source said.

Howe has been interviewed by federal prosecutors “about six times,’’ most recently about two weeks ago, when he “traded something that has to do with Percoco’’ and provided information on the influential, Albany-based, Whiteman Osterman & Hanna law firm, with which he had been affiliated, the source said. 

Howe, who worked for Cuomo when the current governor was federal housing secretary under President Bill Clinton, was described by the source as isolated from friends and family and disconsolate as Bharara’s investigation continues to unfold.

“He doesn’t have a job and no one from Andrew Cuomo’s entourage will even deal with him,’’ said the source.

Cuomo claimed that he didn't have much to do with Howe in the recent past, but Tim Knauss discovered that he was showing up at Cuomo functions like this one:

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A smiling Todd Howe was photographed, standing in the background, as Gov. Andrew Cuomo enthusiastically shook hands with the president of COR Development Co. during an October 2012 visit to Syracuse.

Four years later, Howe is no longer in the background. The Washington, D.C.-based lobbyist is front and center in a federal investigation of Cuomo's Upstate economic development projects, according to published reports.

Another person named in the federal probe is Joseph Percoco, Cuomo's former executive deputy secretary, who appears with Howe in the background of the 2012 photo from Syracuse.

The photo was taken during sunnier times for Cuomo's Upstate economic initiatives, years before U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's investigation raised a cloud of suspicion.

The picture captures the role that Howe has apparently been playing for years in Syracuse economic development projects. Since the federal probe became publicly known, Howe's image has emerged as an affable guy to see for help in getting state funding or access to Albany power.

In the foreground of the 2012 photo, Cuomo shakes hands with Steven Aiello, president of COR, a Fayetteville company. COR is one of more than 20 companies about which Bharara has subpoenaed information from the Cuomo administration, according to reports.

Howe was also used as the "hand model" for Mario Cuomo's portrait in Albany:

ALBANY — Gov. Cuomo claims he barely knows a fired lobbyist under federal investigation — yet he was close enough to the family to be the secret hand model behind Mario Cuomo’s official portrait, The Post has learned.

The liberal legend Mario had scoffed for years at having his likeness hung among the Empire State’s other leaders, so Andrew went behind his back to have the work secretly created from a 1989 photograph.

But the artist demanded it include Mario’s hands clasped on his knee, even though the photo didn’t clearly show his mitts.

“The artist insisted that he needed to see the Governors [sic] hands to paint them,” Howard Glaser, Andrew’s former director of state operations and Mario’s senior advisor, wrote in a private Facebook post obtained by The Post.

Enter Todd Howe, who is being probed by the feds for lobbying work he did for three firms that are part of the Cuomo administration’s economic-development program, the Buffalo Billion.

He raced down to the painter’s Maryland studio and literally lent a hand.

“The artist painted Todd’s hands into the painting to complete the work. So, yeah, it’s actually Todd Howes hands you see painted in the final portrait!!!!! Classic!” Glaser wrote.

Peter Cutler, a former Cuomo spokesman who is also named in a federal subpoena, replied, “Todd told me, saying it was pretty nerve-wracking — as I’m sure we can all understand,” he wrote.

“Thank God GAMC [Governor Andrew Mark Cuomo] pushed to get the portrait done & installed.”

The artist, Simmie Knox — who also did official portraits for then-President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary — recalled Howe giving guidance on how they wanted the painting done, but clammed up when he found out that the lobbyist was under a federal probe.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo presented the painting to his dad as a birthday gift at a 2012 ceremony.

Cuomo distanced himself from Howe in May and in June, claiming he and Howe were not "close."

The record appears to contradict that Cuomo assertion.

Whether Howe is telling tales on Cuomo or just providing evidence against Percoco and the entities involved in state contracting, well, that's hard to say.

Fred Dicker's piece says Howe is promised "'favorable treatment' and 'leniency' in the event that he’s criminally charged, in exchange for full details of his lobbying activities on behalf of several major state contractors with senior Cuomo administration officials."

The phrase leaves "senior Cuomo administration officials" is the interesting thing there.

That may mean people around Cuomo, or previously around Cuomo (like Percoco.)

But, since Cuomo has been known to leak anonymously to the press under the moniker "a senior Cuomo administration official," it also could mean Cuomo himself.

Time will tell whether Cuomo is actually the target of all of this or if Bharara gets to his inner circle without touching Cuomo himself.

So far, we have no direct indication that Cuomo is in any legal jeopardy.

But you can bet that if the Cuomo people didn't already know that Bharara has Howe wrapped up with a cooperation agreement, they're not happy now that the news is in Dicker's column in the NY Post.

Because who knows what Howe is telling Bharara now that he's cooperating.

It's Pay-To-Play All The Way With Andrew Cuomo

Jon Campbell takes an extensive look at Governor Cuomo's economic development programs and finds the following:

Two of New York’s most-powerful landlords are little-known nonprofits with deep pockets, well-connected boards of directors, ties to Rochester contractors and a growing portfolio worth billions that has attracted attention from federal prosecutors.

Meet the Fort Schuyler Management Corp. and Fuller Road Management Corp., owners of an increasing number of the facilities at the center of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s push to revitalize upstate New York’s long-lagging economy.

The two nonprofits act as the real-estate arm of the SUNY Polytechnic Institute, the Albany- and Utica-based college whose clout has spread as Cuomo entrusted founding president Alain Kaloyeros with overseeing the Buffalo Billion development program, a $600 million photonics institute in Rochester and facilities in Greece, Canandaigua, Utica and Syracuse.

The nonprofits have awarded lucrative contracts to big-money donors to Cuomo’s political campaign, including two Rochester-based contractors. Board members at various points have seen their companies or clients receive leases and deals, a review by Gannett’s Albany Bureau shows.

For years, Fort Schuyler and Fuller Road have operated with little scrutiny — largely faceless, quasi-public organizations existing as a mechanism to comply with IRS rules when transferring billions in state funds to facilities that house private companies.

That has changed: U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman are separately investigating contracts awarded by the two entities, with Cuomo’s administration acknowledging the federal investigation is examining possible “improper bidding.”

Here's the way this worked:

Contractors submitted bids (often rigged by the state so that only one local contractor could win), then submitted contributions to Cuomo, then won the contracts - whee!!!!

How often did this happen?

A lot - take the Rochester contracts, for example:

As their portfolio grew, Fort Schuyler and Fuller Road have doled out construction contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years. Often, those contracts went to Cuomo campaign donors, records show.

In Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany and Plattsburgh, Fort Schuyler put out separate requests for proposals for a “qualified local developer” to develop a “strategic partnership” with.

The requests for proposals were detailed and extensive, requiring a locally based contractor with at least 15 years experience and the ability to build high-tech infrastructure such as clean rooms and smart classrooms.

Fort Schuyler’s contract in Rochester went to LeChase Construction and The Pike Co. in 2014, meeting minutes show.
...

On Sept. 24, 2014, eight days after Fort Schuyler’s board was informed of the Rochester bids, LeChase CEO Wayne LeChase contributed $25,000 to Cuomo’s re-election campaign, state records show. The same day, Pike President Rufus Judson contributed $10,000.

Five days later, Wayne LeChase contributed another $11,181.

And the Buffalo contracts:

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is probing the process by which three developers who are Gov. Cuomo donors came to get the bulk of a billion dollars in state contracts to develop major projects in Buffalo. Federal prosecutors have subpoenaed the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute, the president of which, Alain Kaloyeros, oversees the Buffalo Billion program. The program is supposed to generate thousands of upstate jobs through the tech, clean-energy, and pharmaceutical facilities the Cuomo cronies were tapped to build with $855 million in taxpayer money.

Pressed earlier this summer by a reporter for Buffalo's Investigative Post who was seeking details of the bidding process and faced illegal stonewalling across multiple state agencies and state-run nonprofits, Kaloyeros said, "We are not political operatives nor do we respond to perceived threats and terrorism." That "terrorism" apparently consisted of repeated phone calls, emails, and Freedom of Information Law requests.

Still, little is known about the selection process. What is clear, according to the Investigative Post, is that developer McGuire Development scored the $55 million contract to renovate skyscrapers in Buffalo to accommodate IBM, then three months later, donated $25,000 to Cuomo's campaign. The firm LP Ciminelli scored a heftier $750 million contract to build a solar-panel factory. Its president, Louis Ciminelli, is one of Cuomo's biggest donors in the region, having contributed $96,500 to the governor's two campaigns. Until competitors balked, the request for bids was written with the requirement that bidders have 50 years experience working in Buffalo, which only LP Ciminelli did. That company and Ciminelli Real Estate, run by Louis Ciminelli's brother, won the $50 million contract to build drug research space at a Buffalo medical campus. Paul Ciminelli's $10,500 to Cuomo and $5,000 to Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul cannot have hurt.

And the Syracuse contracts:

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- COR Development, the politically connected company developing the state's nanotechnology hub in DeWitt and Syracuse's Inner Harbor, gave Gov. Andrew Cuomo $50,000 in the past six months, making them Cuomo's top donor in Central New York.

Cuomo has $16 million in his campaign account, according to a campaign finance report he filed Friday.

Cuomo received $25,000 last week, on Jan. 12, from a COR Development subsidiary, Clay South Development Co., and four COR executives, including President Steven Aiello, Executive Vice Presidents Joe Girardi and Paul Joynt, and Julie Aiello, the wife of Executive Vice President Jeffrey Aiello.

That came on top of $25,000 that COR Route 31 Co. LLC gave to Cuomo on Aug. 24.
COR has been the governor's biggest contributor from the Syracuse region since Cuomo was elected governor in 2010, giving him more than $300,000.

The company has received contracts from the state for numerous projects under Cuomo. COR built a $15 million film hub for New York state in 2015 on land it owns in DeWitt. Cuomo announced COR would also build a $90 million facility for Soraa, an LED lighting manufacturer at the same nanotechnology hub.

And the timing of the donations?

Often coordinated:

COR Development, its subsidiaries, four partners and their wives are among the largest Cuomo donors in Central New York. They have given a combined $337,500 to Cuomo's election campaigns between October 2010 and January 2016.

Partners and family members write checks to the governor's campaign for as much as $25,000, sometimes on the same day, records show. A statewide candidate can accept up to $44,000 per individual for the four-year election cycle. An individual donor is limited to $150,000 in combined contributions to all candidates in a calendar year, according to the NYS Board of Elections.

A clear pattern - RFP's rigged so that only one or two contractors can win them, proposals submitted by the contractors, donations sent to Cuomo concurrent to the proposals, contracts doled out to the donors.

Now whether Bharara is able to tie Cuomo to this, make a criminal case out of it and take him out in handcuffs is another matter.

But the pattern throughout is quite clear - it's pay-to-play all the way with Andrew Cuomo.

Iphone Of Cuomo Crony Kaloyeros Scrutinized

Just in case you think SUNY Polytechnic head Alain Kaloyeros, the man Andrew Cuomo tasked with so many economic development projects across upstate, isn't in trouble with the law, there's this news:

ALBANY — Investigators from Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office are examining an iPhone belonging to Alain Kaloyeros, the president of SUNY Polytechnic Institute, according to people familiar with an ongoing investigation of the school’s contracting practices.

The phone is coming to Schneiderman after state investigators searched an office at SUNY Poly’s Albany campus that was used by Todd Howe and other employees of Whiteman, Osterman and Hanna, the law firm that had employed him.

The surprise search occurred on May 26, and investigators downloaded files from a computer and listened to Howe’s voicemail. Kaloyeros’ phone was surrendered subsequently, the people said.

An official told POLITICO New York that Howe was the “de facto chief of staff” to Kaloyeros. David Doyle, a spokesman for SUNY Poly, previously said that Howe “provides services in assisting in establishing contacts and partnerships in the private sector and between the private and public sector.”

...

 

Schneiderman’s investigation is centered on a dormitory that SUNY Poly was planning to build adjacent to its flagship campus in western Albany. The developer, Columbia Development, began purchasing land several months before the school formally asked for construction proposals. Columbia has said it did “nothing improper.”

Cuomo has said he stands by Kaloyeros and SUNY Poly’s efforts, which have been the cornerstone of the governor’s efforts to revitalize the upstate economy.

Only a matter of time for Howe, Kaloyeros and Percoco.

SUNY Poly Scrubbed Dorm Project After Subpoenas

Gee, this doesn't have the appearance of a problem:

ALBANY – Officials say SUNY Polytechnic and its leader, Alain Kaloyeros, one of the point people for the Buffalo Billion program, is under investigation by the state attorney general over a contract awarded for a new dormitory building at the public college he runs in Albany.

A person familiar with the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is looking at possible bid-rigging violations after just one company – Columbia Development – put in a proposal to build the dorm.

The project, which included a signed contract with Columbia, was canceled last fall after SUNY Polytechnic officials said the construction effort was going to be rebid. It appears the scrubbing of the deal came about two months after Schneiderman issued subpoenas to the public college and the developer for information about the contract process.

 Kaloyeros has been a close advisor to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on upstate economic development issues, and Cuomo personally tapped him to handle mega-projects such as the SolarCity plant under construction in South Buffalo. Columbia is a large developer and builder of projects in the Albany area, including a sprawling new building at the SUNY Polytechnic campus on the west side of Albany. Between corporate contributions and those from individuals tied to the company, it has been a reliable donor to Cuomo in recent years.

Hey, you know that project we were going do but we got subpoenas on it?

Let's not do that anymore, okay.

And there's more trouble in CuomoLand:

The source who spoke to The News said the dorm contract award is not the only matter Schneiderman is looking at involving SUNY Polytechnic; the source declined to elaborate. Also, the person said U.S. Attorney General Preet Bharara is aware of Schneiderman’s probe and that the state investigation of the dorm project and Bharara’s expanding Buffalo Billion investigation is “all inter-connected.” In the Buffalo Billion probe that began with an inquiry after the awarding of the RiverBend project that will house a future SolarCity plant, Bharara issued subpoenas to SUNY Polytechnic and Cuomo’s economic development agency, as well as Buffalo firms LPCiminelli and McGuire Development.

Key takeaway from all of this?

"Schneiderman’s probe and the state investigation of the dorm project and Bharara’s expanding Buffalo Billion investigation is 'all inter-connected.'”

At the very least, Cuomo's going to have some serious political fallout to deal with when all the "interconnected" investigations come to a close and some of Cuomo's closest allies and former aides get carted off in handcuffs.

Investigation Into Another Cuomo Ally Broadens

This was reported late yesterday afternoon, but just in case you missed it:

The New York attorney general’s office is investigating possible bid-rigging related to a proposed dormitory at a State University of New York campus in Albany, part of a broader probe of contracting issues involving an ally of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

The office of Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is examining whether Alain Kaloyeros, the president of SUNY Polytechnic Institute and a powerful force in state economic-development projects, improperly coordinated with real-estate firm Columbia Development, in possible violation of state antitrust laws, the person said.

Subpoenas on the matter were sent in September to SUNY Polytechnic, Columbia Development and Fuller Road Management Corp., a SUNY-affiliated nonprofit responsible for considering the bidding on the dorm project, the person said.

...

The probe comes amid heightened scrutiny of Mr. Cuomo’s upstate redevelopment initiatives, many of which involve SUNY Polytechnic and one of which, the Buffalo Billion project, is under investigation by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office.

EYP Architecture & Engineering, another firm involved in Buffalo Billion, was also subpoenaed by the attorney general’s office in the dorm-bidding probe, the person familiar with the matter said. It wasn’t immediately clear what the firm’s role was in the dorm project.

The fallout for Cuomo?

The investigation is the highest-profile one to date by Mr. Schneiderman into people and projects close to Mr. Cuomo, a fellow Democrat.

And it comes as Mr. Cuomo’s orbit has been shaken by the Buffalo Billion investigation, part of which has become focused on one of the governor’s longtime aides and others close to Mr. Cuomo.

...

Many of the entities and individuals involved in both the state attorney general and U.S. attorney’s investigations have overlapping connections.

There are now multiple tentacles in the investigation into Cuomo administration corruption.

There's the initial Buffalo Billion investigation into bid rigging for Cuomo donors.

There's the Percoco matter wherein Cuomo's former top aide is being investigated for payments from companies with business before the state.

There's another former Cuomo aide, Todd Howe, being investigated similarly.

And there's the Kaloyeros matter, connected to both the Buffalo Billion Project and to the SUNY dorm project.

Count 'em and you've got four separate but interlinking strands of Cuomo corruption investigations.

Nothing yet reaching the governor, but interwoven with all of these scandals is one constant:

Cuomo donors are always involved.

Seasonal Sentiments In The Age Of Cuomo

On the road for a bit today, but thought I'd leave you with a couple of seasonal sentiments before I go - the first from Bill Nojay:

"Is the governor on the target list?” asked Assemblymember Bill Nojay about Preet Bharara and @NYGovCuomo. https://t.co/cfM39BfEHv

— Louis Flores ✍ (@maslowsneeds) December 26, 2015

 Which leads to this nice sentiment:

Coming to a precinct near you soon @fud31 @RichAzzopardi @NYGovCuomo @JonCampbellGAN @powellnyt @ZackFinkNews pic.twitter.com/vKUJevcqdM

— Randy Credico (@Credico2016) December 26, 2015

Keep your eye on the investigation into Cuomo's Buffalo Billion Project and donors - with subpoenas having gone out to Cuomo donors and state entities involved in what appears to be a rigged bidding process, that strikes me as the area where has he the most vulnerability.

This was the Buffalo News story into that back in September:

Federal prosecutor Preet Bharara’s investigation into the Buffalo Billion is part of a larger probe into other development projects, including the Buffalo Schools Construction Project, sources close to the investigation said Friday.

The first hint of an investigation by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney came in the form of subpoenas demanding information on several large-scale state initiatives, many of them with close ties to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and the SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Albany.

Sources said the subpoenas went out across the state and seek documents and records regarding the bidding process on those projects, as well as any communication between state officials and private contractors.

...

Bharara’s office declined to comment on the new investigation, but stopped well short of refuting the New York Post’s initial account of the investigation.

“I’m not saying the story is baseless. I’m saying we can’t comment,” James M. Margolin, a Bharara spokesman, said Friday.

The Post, in its story, said Bharara’s office is looking at multimillion-dollar state contracts that led to the construction of high-tech, drug-development and clean-energy businesses.

“It’s a comprehensive look at the bidding process,” a source told the Post. “They’re looking at communications between contractors and state officials.”

We haven't had any leaks about the Buffalo Billion Project investigation in a while.

We'll see if the silence continues into the new year or if the leaks come again, signaling a new phase for the investigation.

Again, this may not end in an indictment and perp walk for Cuomo.

But given how defensive the Cuomo administration is about the investigation (see here and here), you know they're worried about something.

Bharara Looking To Redefine What Cuomo Says Is No Problem

Fred LeBrun in the Times Union:

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has a federal grand jury looking for corruption in the awarding of contracts and related dealings associated with the so-called Buffalo Billion, and on its face, there's a lot to look at.

Consider:

• A billion taxpayer dollars being handed out to spur economic development in the typical manner the Cuomo administration does business, with as little public disclosure of the nitty-gritty as they can get away with. There was a single applicant for the centerpiece development deal worth $750 million, a solar panel manufacturing plant for SolarCity. The single applicant was LPCiminelli, owned by Louis Ciminelli. He gave the governor nearly $100,000 in campaign donations over two terms. There was no competitive bidding on key subcontracts for building the SolarCity complex, instead, these subcontractors were hand-picked by LPCiminelli — with state approval.

• Three months after another developer, McGuire Development, received a contract for a different major Buffalo Billion project, the Cuomo campaign got a $25,000 contribution from the developer.

• All contract approvals, funds dispersal, and fiscal oversight of the Buffalo Billion family of projects are the exclusive domain of the Empire State Development Corporation, tightly controlled by the governor's office, with approval of the governor's Division of the Budget. In effect, the governor and a coterie of his closest advisors run it all.

• The governor, a particularly astute fundraiser, amassed a reported $47 million in campaign contributions during the last election cycle, much of it from those who in some fashion have done or will do business with the state.

Eye-opening stuff, yet not necessarily even improper by past standards. In fact, much of it is business as usual.

...

As for the governor's political fundraising, the governor himself has repeatedly said there is no connection between contributions and expectations of any reward, between pay and play. He said donors in western New York can see his commitment to the region and would contribute out of general support and encouragement.

It's a system that "hasn't been a problem for the past 100 years, so I don't know why it would be today."

Then again, how naive is it to suggest contributors don't often want a tangible return on investment, or a way of saying thanks? So just maybe what the governor shrugs off as no problem is in fact at the heart of the so-called corrupt Albany political culture. If so, Bharara may well be about to try to redefine what is a problem.

That's good news for the public. Not so much for the governor.

One thing to amend in LeBrun's account - Ciminelli actually gave Cuomo $123,000, not $100,000.

Late last week, we learned that Shelly Silver's defense team plans to call nearly every power broker and politician in Albany as witnesses in his corruption trial.

Cuomo himself made the witness list.

Silver's defense in his corruption trial is essentially "Hey, this is the way Albany operates.  People give to get, they pay to play.  It may be unseemly, it may be ethically-challenged, but it is not illegal."

This is essentially Cuomo's argument too - it "hasn't been a problem for the past 100 years, so I don't know why it would be today."

Bharara has meant business so far in his investigations of two of the infamous "three men in a room" who rule the state.

Just last week we learned that Bharara got 150 subpoenas in his investigation of Dean Skelos, interviewing over 80 witnesses.

The break in the Skelos corruption case came from something Bharara learned from the Shelly Silver investigation, though the US attorney's office had already been investigating Skelos for a month before that new lead came.

Given the seriousness with which Bharara's office pursued both Silver and Skelos, there's little reason to think they aren't given the same breadth, scope and seriousness to the investigation into Cuomo's Buffalo Billion Project.

We know subpoenas went out to SUNY Polytech and the Empire State Development Corporation.

We know the feds are looking very closely at Cuomo's man at SUNY Polytech, the flamboyant Alain Kaloyeros, who has dubbed himself as "Dr. Nano" and makes over $800,000 a year as a state employee.

We know that the feds are looking closely at the contractors in the Buffalo Billion case as well and can be pretty sure they are the same contractors who donated to Cuomo's campaign concurrent to when they were receiving state contracts that looked rigged just for them.

Now maybe Bharara doesn't find any "smoking gun" in all of this and it gets swept away as "business as usual," the kind of stuff that has been going on for a 100 years, as Cuomo himself said.

Maybe.

But as LeBrun wrote in his Times-Union piece today, Bharara appears to be trying to redefine what is "business as usual" in Albany and what is corruption.

He undoubtedly has his own reasons for doing so, since he hasn't taken the same route with Wall Street and the financiers and con men there - cynics among us (including myself) think he's got his own political ambitions and taking out every member of the infamous "three men in a room" club in Albany would certainly serve him politically if he wants to, say, run for governor or something.

That said, his motivations don't detract from the practical effects of his actions.

He's already gotten two of the three men in the room criminally charged and awaiting trial - whether he can successfully get convictions of both is another matter.

And whether he can nail the third man in a room and take him down too, that's even harder to gauge at this point.

But I do think this much is true - he appears to aiming to do just that and given how hard he worked to take out both Silver and Skelos, you can bet he's working very hard at that too.

Bharara Targeting Campaign Fundraising - Especially Cuomo's

Jimmy Vielkind at Politico NY:

ALBANY — As his office investigates one of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's key programs, Preet Bharara is making war on campaign fund-raising as we know it.

The U.S. attorney for the Southern District issued a flurry of subpoenas earlier this summer, seeking information about how construction contracts were awarded on several big state projects in Buffalo, according to people familiar with the investigation and other published reports.

The New York Times reported Sunday that investigators subpoenaed Empire State Development, SUNY Polytechnic Institute and their subsidiaries. It's impossible to know exactly what Bharara is looking for — the prosecutor and his aides refuse to talk about their ongoing work — but his efforts are ensnaring campaign donors whose apparent sin is giving to politicians as they benefitted from state business.

“Their goal is to use the people that are paying to testify against the politicians. They're not after the company that is paying for the service,” said James Cohen, a longtime defense attorney and professor at Fordham Law School. “It's precisely what Bharara said he was going to do: he thinks that Albany and its various tentacles — which go both ways — are really dirty, and have been dirty for a real long time. New York has not shown any ability, in his mind, to attempt to clean it up.”

If Bharara is after the politicians on the other end of the donations and not the donors themselves, then we have a pretty good idea which politician he's targeting here - these are all Cuomo's donors he's looking into:

One of the recently subpoenaed firms is LPCiminelli, sources said, a stalwart contractor in Buffalo that is building a solar panel factory for SUNY Polytechnic Institute. Company president Louis Ciminelli and other entities he controls have given Cuomo $90,800 since 2011, making him one of the governor's 100 largest donors. The solar contract was originally written so only Ciminelli met the criteria; the request for proposals was subsequently amended, but Ciminelli still won.

The correlation between the donations and the award quickly aroused the interest of journalists; Ciminelli and SUNY Poly insist the contract awards were on the merits. Daniel Oliverio, who is representing Ciminelli, declined to confirm or deny the subpoena but said “unequivocally” that the firm and its owners were not the targets of any investigation.

...

There's Ciminelli in Buffalo. In Albany, Joe Nicolla and Columbia Development gave Cuomo thousands as it won contracts to build new buildings for SUNY Poly and a convention center down the block from the Capitol. Other companies in the Capital Region held a fund-raiser for Cuomo before they won money in an economic development contest. Cuomo raked in $250,000 from developers in Kiryas Joel after he vetoed a bill that would have restricted the Hasidic enclave's growth.

 As for what Bharara may be looking to pin on Cuomo:

Paul DerOhannesian, a defense lawyer based in Albany, said the focus of honest services fraud is on the fraudulent and deceptive conduct of the public official who abuses a position of trust, and the government is not required to link any particular payment to a specific act on the part of the public official. The quid pro quo element is therefore satisfied if the public official understood that as a result of the payment, he of she was expected to exercise particular kinds of influence on behalf of the person directing the payments as opportunities arose, or when called upon to do so.

“It's murky,” he said.

Polls show that New York voters agree with Bharara, and even if it can't be declared strictly illegal, business as usual in Albany needs to change. If the attorney general has his way, that's going to apply to the entire elected class that thrives on and perpetuates the current system, from Cuomo on down.

I'm sure there's something Bharara knows that we don't know about all of this that has spurred his interest (as well as the subpoenas to Cuomo's donors as well as Empire State Development Corporation and Suny Polytechnic) and the rapid fire leaks are indication that what he knows is bad for somebody.

Bharara's leaks are strategic, often setting up the frame that somebody's got some legal trouble (e.g., Silver, Skelos.)

I would think the same thing is being done here and since the donors in question are all Cuomo's and the recipients of the subpoenas on the state end are allies of Cuomo (like Alain Kaloyeros at Suny) or entities essentially controlled by Cuomo (Empire State Development), the target of Bharara's investigation is pretty clear.

Another Cuomo Donor Given What Appears To Be Rigged Contract From SUNY

Okay, this is starting to get good.

Chris Churchill reports in the Times Union about another Cuomo donor who got what appears to be a rigged SUNY contract:

We don't know exactly why SUNY Poly's involvement with the Buffalo Billion has attracted the attention of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

But from what we can surmise, the decision to subpoena records was at least partly motivated by the awarding of a construction bid to one of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's major donors.

Hmm. Now why does that sound familiar?

Oh, that's right. We have similar concerns in Albany, where SUNY Poly just awarded a contract for dormitory construction to Columbia Development, whose entities have given at least $175,000 to the governor's campaign fund since the start of 2014.

...

June 2014: The Times Union learns that Columbia is the developer for the so-called ZEN building, a $191 million project that is still under construction. Columbia will be also be a ZEN tenant.

July 2014: We learn that Columbia is buying homes on Loughlin Street, just south of the SUNY Poly campus. "Nobody here has any idea what that's about," Gretzinger said at the time.

March 2015: SUNY Poly issues a request for proposals to construct dorms. The school asks that the dorms be within a 10-minute walk of campus, and it requires that the developer be based in the Capital Region and have experience in dorm construction.

The requirements seemed perfectly suited for Columbia, but SUNY Poly head Alain Kaloyeros cautioned against jumping to conclusions. "It would be an erroneous assumption to presume at this point that we have a preferred developer or location," Kaloyeros said then.

September 2015: We learn that Columbia has, indeed, won the bid and will develop three dorms and parking on land that includes Loughlin Street. SUNY Poly is negotiating to buy the land from the developer. The project architect is EYP, which is headquartered on the SUNY Poly campus.

OK, so take that timeline and overlay it with what I found on Monday while searching the Board of Elections online records.

August 2013: A Columbia entity gives $25,000 to Cuomo's campaign fund. It's the company's first donation to Cuomo in the database.

June 2014: Two Columbia entities — Ridgehill LLC and 25 Monroe LLC — give $50,000 each. All together, Columbia and related LLCs give $115,000 to the governor over the course of 2014.

July 2015: Six separate Columbia entities give a total of $50,000 to the governor on just one day, July 13. All together, Columbia has given $60,000 so far this year, according to state records.

The three-year total: $200,000.

That's a significant amount of money — and it's probably an undercount of Columbia's contributions. It's so difficult to ferret out all the various Columbia-associated LLCs that it's likely I missed a few.

Columbia President Joe Nicolla, who also is a SUNY Poly Foundation board member, could probably provide the precise number, but he declined comment Monday.

...

In Buffalo, a similar pattern was uncovered by the Investigative Post, a Buffalo-based online news outlet.

Jim Heaney, its editor, dug deep on the Buffalo Billion, a Cuomo economic development effort in which Kaloyeros is heavily involved. His reporting peeled away layers of secrecy to find that a request-for-proposals seemed written for LPCiminelli, which is owned by a major Cuomo donor.

Heaney's work raised eyebrows — and Bharara's were apparently among them.

Is Bharara looking into Columbia and the Suny Poly contract?

We don't know but we do know that SUNY Poly was on the end of subpoenas from Bharara's office.

We also see a curious pattern here - entities that win contracts from SUNY Poly giving money to Cuomo after the contract is awarded.

Happened with McGuire Development, which gave $25,000 to Cuomo after it won a $55 million dollar contract as part of the Buffalo Billion project.

And then there's LP Ciminelli, the contractor that had given Cuomo close to $100,000 and won the $750 million dollar Buffalo Bill project contract that appeared rigged for only LP Ciminelli.

Two examples of contractors winning huge contracts and money flowing to Cuomo directly afterward.

One example of a Cuomo donor winning a really huge contract.

Couple that pattern of donors winning contracts with the lack of transparency around the contracts and the bidding process, add in the herculean efforts by SUNY Poly and Fort Schuyler, the non-profit affiliated with it, to maintain that lack of transparency, and you really do have to raise your eyebrow at the whole thing.

Fortunately for us, US Attorney Preet Bharara has apparently raised his eyebrow too and followed that up with subpoenas to some of the entities involved in this.

Dunno about you, but the more I read about the Buffalo Billion project investigation, SUNY Poly and how Cuomo's donors kept getting these huge contracts and steering money back his way, the more I think someone's going to get indicted.

Cuomo Acknowledges Communicating With Donor/Contractor At Center Of Corruption Probe

Azi Paybarah at Capital NY:

Governor Andrew Cuomo said he played no role in a campaign contributor winning a mutli-million-dollar construction bid in Buffalo that is now reportedly the subject of a probe by Southern District U.S. attorney Preet Bharara.

As part of the reported investigation, Bharara's office served subpoenas on the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute, whose president is heavily involved in Cuomo's economic development programs upstate.

“SUNY has administered the grant process, so literally all I know is what I read in the newspaper, but I’m very proud of what we’re doing in Buffalo,” Cuomo told reporters in Harlem at an unrelated event.

...

The probe into Buffalo reportedly focuses on how Lou Ciminelli, who donated more than $96,000 to Cuomo’s re-election campaign, won a narrowly tailored bid to construct a solar panel factory in Buffalo worth around $750 million.

Asked if he was confident the contract was not influenced by the donations, Cuomo replied, “SUNY has administered billions of dollars' worth of programs and they’ve done it all well.”

The governor did acknowledge having communicated with Ciminelli, but said the contract was left in the hands of SUNY officials.

“I have probably spoken with him but I have nothing to do with the selection whatsoever. That was handled by SUNY,” Cuomo said.

You can see more on that donor, Louis P. Ciminelli, and his connections to Andrew Cuomo and various levels of government here.

You can see a little more on other Cuomo donors who may be the focus of Bharara's corruption probe here.

Let me remind readers of the pattern we have seen with Preet Bharara investigations.

First comes the leak and/or leaks about high-powered figures like Sheldon Silver or Dean Skelos.

Then come either the denials or obfuscations from the high-powered figures who are the focus of the leaks.

Then come some more leaks that indicate criminal charges are coming soon.

Then the arrests and criminal charges/indictments.

Finally, there are usually a couple more charges thrown on after the fact for good measure.

As memory serves me, this is how events played out in both the Silver and Skelos cases.

Hard to say if that's how things play out here, but the more we learn about the probe and the number of Cuomo donors involved coupled with Cuomo's denials that he had nothing to do with any of this and besides, it's just politics - well, it is starting to look like this story fits the pattern.

Whether it reaches as high as Cuomo himself, that's another matter.

But I can't remember a time where Bharara leaked info in a case like this that didn't end up with criminal charges in the end.

And now that we have Cuomo acknowledging personally communicating with one of the donors - that does makes things a little more interesting.

The Cuomo Donors At The Center Of The Buffalo Billion Corruption Investigation

Gothamist with a good round-up of the Cuomo Buffalo Billion corruption story:

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is probing the process by which three developers who are Gov. Cuomo donors came to get the bulk of a billion dollars in state contracts to develop major projects in Buffalo. Federal prosecutors have subpoenaed the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute, the president of which, Alain Kaloyeros, oversees the Buffalo Billion program. The program is supposed to generate thousands of upstate jobs through the tech, clean-energy, and pharmaceutical facilities the Cuomo cronies were tapped to build with $855 million in taxpayer money.

Pressed earlier this summer by a reporter for Buffalo's Investigative Post who was seeking details of the bidding process and faced illegal stonewalling across multiple state agencies and state-run nonprofits, Kaloyeros said, "We are not political operatives nor do we respond to perceived threats and terrorism." That "terrorism" apparently consisted of repeated phone calls, emails, and Freedom of Information Law requests.

Still, little is known about the selection process. What is clear, according to the Investigative Post, is that developer McGuire Development scored the $55 million contract to renovate skyscrapers in Buffalo to accommodate IBM, then three months later, donated $25,000 to Cuomo's campaign. The firm LP Ciminelli scored a heftier $750 million contract to build a solar-panel factory. Its president, Louis Ciminelli, is one of Cuomo's biggest donors in the region, having contributed $96,500 to the governor's two campaigns. Until competitors balked, the request for bids was written with the requirement that bidders have 50 years experience working in Buffalo, which only LP Ciminelli did. That company and Ciminelli Real Estate, run by Louis Ciminelli's brother, won the $50 million contract to build drug research space at a Buffalo medical campus. Paul Ciminelli's $10,500 to Cuomo and $5,000 to Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul cannot have hurt.

Cuomo said today that he had nothing to do with the awarding of any contracts:

Cuomo points finger at SUNY when asked about Buffalo Billion investigation: "SUNY has administered the grant process."

— Thomas Kaplan (@thomaskaplan) September 20, 2015

Cuomo on LPCiminelli's role in Buffalo Billion: "I had nothing to do with the selection whatsoever. That was handled by SUNY."

— Thomas Kaplan (@thomaskaplan) September 20, 2015

And at least on the face of things, that's true:

SUNY Polytechnic Institute is headed by Alain Kaloyeros, who has led New York's high-tech effort under three governors. A call to Kaloyeros wasn't returned Friday.

In 2014, Cuomo's office had announced the key firms in the Buffalo Billion project were selected by the SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering and the Fort Schuyler Management Corp.

Kaloyeros headed the college, which is now SUNY Polytechnic Institute.

Fort Schuyler is nonprofit organization affiliated with SUNY and SUNY Polytechnic "that facilitates research and economic development opportunities in support of New York's emerging nanotechnology and semiconductor clusters," according to its website.

Of course, given Cuomo's famous "hands-on" management style, it's difficult to believe that there wasn't at least a little pressure exerted behind the scenes steering the choices.

With Cuomo throwing SUNY under the bus today with his statements, the message has been sent to anybody at SUNY Polytechnic or Fort Schuyler that Cuomo is going to scapegoat SUNY here.

So if there was any pressure put upon anybody behind the scenes and/or any other kind of shenanigans Cuomo and his minions are famous for (see the Moreland Commission for a prime example of those), there's going to be an incentive for those pressured to dish dirt to the feds.

Between the Cuomo donors who appear to be recipients of subpoenas from the feds investigating the bidding process (see here for a partial illustration of the tentacles between the Ciminellis, Cuomo and some of the other players) and the SUNY Poly and Fort Schuyler functionaries who handed the contracts out to them, there's a whole lot of danger here that somebody with something very, very damaging to Andrew Cuomo is going to get squeezed.