De Blasio Donor Pleaded Guilty To Bribery In 2016: Documents

NEW YORK, NY — A donor to Mayor Bill de Blasio secretly admitted in October 2016 to bribing public officials in New York City and on Long Island, federal court records unsealed Wednesday show.

Harendra Singh, a wealthy restaurateur who backed de Blasio's 2013 campaign, pleaded guilty to eight federal crimes including bribery and fraud, according to documents filed in the Eastern District federal court on Long Island.

Singh admitted to giving an unnamed city official tens thousands of dollars in campaign contributions in exchange for help renewing his tony restaurant in Queens, the records say. The description of the scheme matches Singh's effortsto get de Blasio's help in dealing with his restaurant, The Water's Edge, The New York Times reported.

He also gave cash and expensive gifts to Edward Mangano, the former Nassau County executive, and John Venditto, the former Town of Oyster Bay supervisor, in exchange for lucrative government contracts and loan guarantees.

In a transcript of his Oct. 17, 2016 plea in the Long Island court, Singh agreed to cooperate with the federal criminal investigations of de Blasio, Mangano and Venditto, Newsday reported. But de Blasio was not charged after a yearlong probe of his fund-raising practices by federal and state prosecutors in Manhattan.

Just three days after Singh's guilty plea, though, federal prosecutors on Long Island indicted Mangano and Venditto on corruption charges. The documents were unsealed Wednesday as part of the evidence discovery process in Mangano's and Venditto's cases. Venditto later resigned but Mangano stayed in office until the end of his term last year.

Singh was arrested on separate bribery charges in 2015. He has not been sentenced.

De Blasio has denied that he ever traded official actions in exchange for campaign funds, even though prosecutors have said his actions ran right up against the law.

"The allegations against this administration were never proven because they are not true," Eric Phillips, de Blasio's press secretary, said in a statement. "They are old news that’s been widely reported and reviewed extensively by federal prosecutors before they closed their investigation. We make decisions on the merits. Period."

One of the documents unsealed Wednesday outlining the charges to which Singh admitted details his efforts to win favors from de Blasio. Singh held a fundraising event for the mayor in October 2013, about a month before he was elected. In December 2014, Singh emailed a de Blasio aide saying he "need(ed) help" navigating a city agency, the document says.

Seven months later, in July 2015, Singh got a top de Blasio aide to set up a meeting between him and that agency's head "in an effort to pressure the Agency" to make a deal beneficial to Singh, the document says.

Details of Singh's scheme involving Mangano and Venditto track with the allegations in their cases. Prosecutors have alleged that he gave Mangano's wife, Linda, a $450,000 no-show job as a "food taster" in one of his restaurants. He also bought Mangano a $3,600 massage chair and paid for limousine rides for Venditto, according to the unsealed document.

Mangano and Venditto have pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.

(Lead image: Mayor Bill de Blasio is pictured in Manhattan in November 2017. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)