Bernard Kerik’s indictment on federal corruption charges last week left unanswered a nagging question from longtime Kerik-watchers:
What, exactly, became of hundreds of thousands of dollars from a city-created foundation, of which Kerik — Rudy Giuliani’s friend, protege and appointee — was listed as president in the days when he ran the city jails?
The answer could be explosive. Or it could be innocuous.
The point is that we still do not know.
In 2004, a former deputy commissioner, Fred Patrick, was sentenced to federal prison after pleading guilty to defrauding the foundation of more than $137,000 — purportedly for phone calls of a sexual nature and a loan that was repaid into Patrick’s personal account.
But the New York City Correction Foundation Inc. collected at least seven times that amount — more than $1 million — between 1995 and 2000 in the form of cash rebates from cigarette companies that sold their products in city jails, investigators said.
Between 1998 and 2000, Kerik, as commissioner, was listed the foundation’s president. He later insisted he knew nothing.....
Dan Janison
....of improper actions by Patrick, its treasurer. Mind you, this was during the same period when Kerik allegedly misused his office for financial gain in ways unrelated to the foundation.
In 2000, Kerik left the department to become police commissioner. That year, city investigators say, the cigarette money began flowing back to the city coffers — where the comptroller’s office said it should have been going all along.
A city Department of Investigation memo from December 2004 said — based on a “preliminary review” — that “all other foundation payments and expenses” were for “legitimate services rendered.” Some of the tax filings listed training, violence reduction and inmate assistance programs among the expenditures.
All that is way too vague an accounting for some correction veterans. Terrence Skinner, a retired deputy warden who helped blow the whistle on shady dealings on Rikers Island, notes that “preliminary” is the key word. Curiously, this memo closing out the city probe was dated Dec. 2 — nearly two years after it began, yet only one day before Kerik’s ill-fated nomination for Homeland Security secretary was announced. Also of interest: the DOI’s then inspector general for the Correction Department, a friend and ally of Kerik, was later removed from the post by aides to Mayor Michael Bloomberg — a move the former official, Michael Caruso, has challenged in a lawsuit.
Last year came reports that the U.S. attorney’s office probing Kerik was eyeing this foundation, which the city dissolved in 2005. Friday’s indictment does not reflect that. Skinner asks: “How is it that a forensic audit of the foundation’s expenditures was never conducted?” State sources say the attorney general’s office under Eliot Spitzer did begin making inquiries in 2003 — but backed off for the federal inquiry.
Someone with subpoena power might just want to go back and clear up the mystery. Or if they have, let the public in on it.