New York rewards traffickers with hundreds of millions of dollars with a criminal record

City Comptroller Brad Lander, who has publicly vowed to weed out bad actors among city contractors, has a different take on shady contractors with a criminal record.

The city’s top financial watchdog, a Socialist, is tasked with monitoring city contracts, checking them for waste and fraud, and if there are red flags, sending them back to the city agency that issued the contracts for further review. While Lander cannot stop the contract, his office plays an important role in oversight and in practice can mess up the approval process.

According to a press release from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, in October 2022, Dragonetti Brothers Landscaping, a longtime city contractor, paid a $1.2 million fine after pleading guilty to insurance fraud. Since the 1990s, the company has won hundreds of city contracts for projects such as landscaping parks, redevelopment of sidewalks and pedestrian crossings. Representatives for Dragonetti did not respond to a request for comment.

The guilty plea barred Dragonetti from working with the city’s Department of Engineering and Building and the Business Conduct Commission for three years, although other agencies could continue to work with them.

Lander appears to have stamped at least seven new contracts that the firm won in October and November 2022, according to the office’s own website checkbook.com. Parks Department contracts include $7.6 million to plant trees in Manhattan, $7.3 million to remove trees and stumps in Queens, and $2.5 million to trim blocks in Brooklyn.

“I can tell you about [comptroller’s] work has become very politicized, and the politicization of work is starting to get in the way of how work is done,” former Deputy Comptroller Michael Lambert told The Post, calling the city’s work with shady suppliers “a major drop in the ball at the level of the contract renegotiation process.”

In September 2022, the City Department of Engineering and Construction awarded a $130 million contract to LendLease US Construction LMB Inc. to build the Shirley Chisholm Recreation Center in Brooklyn. The 65,000-square-foot facility in East Flatbush will include a basketball court, indoor pool, indoor track and gym.

But in 2012, the same company admitted to the US Department of Justice that they were defrauding government clients by systematically overbilling projects, including many in New York. Two top executives later pleaded guilty and the company eventually paid $56 million in fines and restitution.

“Through this deliberate scheme of billing customers for backlog work, [LendLease] defrauded their clients and stole taxpayer dollars,” then-U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said.

Lend-Lease defended its current practice. “You are referring to a case that ended in 2012 when the company entered into a deferred prosecution agreement … and all charges were dropped in 2014, which meant we avoided a guilty plea and/or prosecution,” a company spokesperson said. . “The company subsequently took appropriate remedial action, including restitution payments to customers.”

In 2019, the city’s Investigation Department launched an investigation into Acacia Network, the city’s largest provider of homeless shelters, after the nonprofit was arrested for allegedly funneling $12 million to a commercial subcontractor that was originally owned by Acacia leaders. .

That hasn’t stopped the city’s Department of Homeless Services from awarding the nonprofit hundreds of millions of dollars in new contracts in 2022, including more than $140 million for a shelter in Queens and another $130 million for another in the Bronx.

“Acacia Network is committed to providing high-quality end-to-end services to thousands of vulnerable New Yorkers every year. These allegations in 2019 in the media have created a narrative about the organization that is simply not true. We welcomed the additional review and complied with all requests for information resulting from this. We continue to have a good track record with our city regulators and we look forward to continuing our work with our partners to achieve our shared goals,” a spokesman for The Post said.

Queens Democratic councilor Bob Holden said the companies “disturbed the public trust” and “should not do business with this city.” As city finance manager, he said there was no more money on Lander.

“Brad Lander is the gatekeeper. He is the man we have to investigate this, stop this and end this corruption. New York State is one of the most corrupt states in the union, and the city is a big part of that,” Holden said.

“If he was doing the job he was hired to do, I don’t think we would have this problem and you wouldn’t be writing this story.”

Dubious contracts challenge Lander’s public praise for good government. The Controller has long advocated the elimination of “corruption vulnerabilities in the city’s contracting process”.

Team Lander pointed the finger at the city’s contract-issuing agencies.

“Councilman Holden intends to misunderstand the fundamentals of the city’s contracting process, which places city agencies in charge of selecting and vetting suppliers, while the office of the comptroller is responsible for ultimate oversight of city agencies to ensure that proper procurement rules are followed and money is available. to the budget to pay for the contract,” said Lander spokeswoman Chloe Cheek.