According to information given to the press at a conference in Newark, a former Guttenberg councilman and tax preparation business owner, Vincent Tabbachino, was one of the 44 individuals charged today in the F.B.I.’s investigation of public corruption and money laundering.
Tabbachino is being charged as a co-defendant with Ridgefield Borough Mayor Anthony Suarez. Suarez allegedly accepted $10,000 from a federal undercover witness, and through Tabbachino as a middle man, promised the witness assistance in getting approvals for future developments in Ridgefield, officials said.
Tabbachino allegedly kept the cash and wrote checks totaling $10,000. According to this information, one check for $2,500 was cashed, and they were for Suarez’s legal defense fund regarding an allegation made by a political opponent.
He also allegedly laundered $100,000 for the undercover witnesses’ supposed knock-off handbag business.
Tabbachino was a councilman under then Guttenberg Mayor Nicholas Cicco and was charged with corruption in a 1989 trial over the refusal to reappoint two men as special police officers. Their charge was for “corrupt solicitation of political services to influence the distribution of municipal jobs.”
Cicco and Tabbachino were convicted, but the charges were overturned by an appellate court. – Tricia Tirella