Former Hoboken Mayor Anthony Russo has been charged with a seven-count federal indictment.
According to the written indictment, counts one through six, the “dishonest services” charges, allege that Russo solicited and took bribes from bar owners and contractors doing business with Hoboken or seeking contracts. The charges are formally labeled as mail fraud.
The seventh count deals with alleged extortion.
Russo allegedly used an intermediary to obtain several of the allegedly illegal payments. The intermediary was not identified in the indictment. Nor were contractors and bar owners who allegedly made illegal payments.
Russo also was charged with failing to disclose the allegedly illegal payments between 1994 and 2001 on his annual financial disclosure forms filed with the state Division of Local Government Services in the Department of Community Affairs.
Some highlights of the indictment:
According to court documents, Russo allegedly took “at least” $5,000 from bar owners from 1994 to 1997 through an unnamed intermediary who threatened Alcohol Beverage Control Board violations if bar owners didn’t pay up. (Note: In 1999, former ABC Chairman Frank Andreula pleaded guilty to taking kickbacks from an ABC attorney and bar owners. Andreula admitted that in 1994 he received a payoff of between $500 and $2,000 from the former owner of the Clam Broth House to facilitate the transfer of the liquor license to the new purchaser. Andreula admitted to making approximately three kickback demands in 1995 and 1996 from then new owners of the Clam Broth House.)
One count states that Russo allegedly accepted several thousand dollars between 1994 and 1996 on approximately a monthly basis from a “business that which contracted with the city to use public land to operate parking lots on locations on the Hoboken waterfront.”
According to the indictment, Russo, through an unnamed intermediary, allegedly accepted at least $15,000 in 1997 from a towing contractor to influence Russo in return for professional services contracts.
According to the indictment, on an ongoing basis between 1997 to about December 2001, increments of thousands of dollars at a time were allegedly given to Russo from an unnamed accounting firm in return for official action on professional services contracts. (While the accounting firm was not named, Gerard Lisa, 46, a well-known and politically connected Hoboken-based accountant, admitted in federal court a month ago to paying thousands of dollars in bribes to former Hudson County Executive Robert Janiszewski and a “highly placed elected official” in Hoboken from 1997 to 2001. According to City Business Administrator Robert Drasheff, between 1997 and 2001 Lisa’s firm billed the city between $370,000 and $725,000 per year for financial services. For many years, Lisa ran the firm with his brother Joe, a close friend of Russo who passed away in 1997.)
One charge alleges that Russo, though an unnamed intermediary, got $1,500 from an attorney in 1998 in connection with awarding a Hoboken Board of Education contract for legal services. The attorney in question was not named.
Count seven charges extortion, specifically to obtain money from the aforementioned accounting firm “under the color of official right.” – Tom Jennemann