While the Feds play little games with the 3 CAD people they arrested, we'll continue to expose corruption that goes way beyond the less than $5,000 bribes the Feds say they ran a full 3 Year sting to uncover. And, as has been the case for almost 2 years now, our "official" government will pretend they know nothing of the charges we've all made on these pages. Of course, we're expected to pay no attention to the fact that HUD visited the NYCHA-Spotlight site a total of 40 times during the month of January. (Click here and see middle chart) For comparison, HUD visited 3 times in November, and didn't even drop by in December. In the top figure, you can see a listing of the top ten sites, based on how many Kilobytes in files they downloaded. It also lists the number of visits from those particular servers. HUD is listed twice, as the visits came from two different servers. (This could mean both HUD in Washington, DC and the local office here in NYC.)
Some of you may also be interested to know that we've slowly picked up an International audience. (Click here and see bottom chart)
So, when you get discouraged at the fact that even those politicians you trust appear to be hiding from their responsibility to insure that the Billions of dollars that NYCHA gets from your Federal, State and City taxes, try to remember that the pressure is slowly building.
I've had a few calls from NY politicians praising Spotty. Unfortunately, this praise must go unacknowledged. You see, even some of these politicians fear retaliation should their support for cleaning up NYCHA become known.
(What the hell happened to this City???)
After due deliberation (I forgot to bring something to read into the men's room, so I had some extra minutes), a momentous decision was reached. Beginning with this issue, a portion of each issue will be used to explain and/or highlight individual elements of the aborted IG/DOI investigation into systemic corruption within NYCHA.
Instead of having 20-45 minute clips of recordings made during (and after) the investigation, we'll place specific snippets that should not exceed 2-3 minutes of conversation. And we will explain how each of the practices described in the conversations winds up costing taxpayers money, decreases the quality of life (and the health) of NYCHA tenants and allows a group of corrupt contractors, corrupt inspectors and corrupt NYCHA executives to defraud all of us.
We begin with one of the largest areas of corruption in NYCHA's handling of contracts. While this example, explained to us by John Kilpatrick of the NYCHA IG's office, concerns $6,000, other phony change orders make this one look minuscule. But, for now, we'll let examples of those wait until we see how the current Federal investigation progresses.
Quick background:
We had a roofing contractor called BQE (and Phoenix and other aliases???). BQE was really owned by a guy named Singh, although Singh had one of his family members fronting as the owner, as Singh had been convicted of a few things, including international drug smuggling. Due to some of Singh's past offences, he was NOT allowed to be involved with any contracts that had Federal government funding. As NYCHA is around 90% Fed funding, Singh shouldn't have been allowed near a NYCHA job.
Tony DiAlto and another of our group of inspectors had gathered proof that Singh was behind BQE, and John Kilpatrick (DOI/IG Investigator) told me that BQE would no longer work at NYCHA. (Who knows if that's true?)
Anyway, on the tape John Kilpatrick is telling me how one of Singh's phony change orders was approved. When you hear John relate how Tony yelled at Baby Kumar (Singh's nephew/cousin) something like "How the F--– did you get this approved, as it's part of the General Conditions", "General Conditions" are items that the contractor is responsible for as part of the overall contract. The contractor DOES NOT get any extra money for items covered by General Conditions. So, the $6,000 is actually money stolen from the Federal Government. I'll bet there are lots of guys in jail for much less than an outright theft of Federal money!
Click here for the sound file. It is less than 90K, so it will only take a couple of minutes even on a 28.8 modem. Again, you'll need the Real Audio® Player to hear the file.
After the section covering the Change Order, I added a short clip from John Kilpatrick's conversation praising me a few weeks before I left NYCHA. Since DOI is telling that Tabloid Reporter (See Issue 45 on the Web) that, over a year after I left NYCHA I ruined their investigation by speaking with a reporter (BULL!), I should let you hear the IG Investigator telling me how nobody had ever done anything like this before. On other tapes, both Kilpatrick and his boss, Steve Gruberger, are heard laying all sorts of laudatory terms on myself and the other "honest" inspectors who had risked so much in order to clean up Bill Russo's Contract Administration Department.
I'm hoping that DOI will claim that any item that has been written about in the Special Corruption Issue is a lie. But they won't, as they fear I'd have a tape of their own investigators that would back what is written. Therefore, you will only get generalities out of DOI, and the Post will gladly print those generalities, as it makes City Hall happy.
That's life in NYC!
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