Weinstein Story Led Manhattan DA To Indict Me: Ex Newsweek Chair

NEW YORK — The indicted former chairman of Newsweek's parent company claims the Manhattan district attorney came after him in retaliation for a news story that criticized the prosecutor's investigation of Harvey Weinstein.

Manhattan prosecutors have charged Etienne Uzac, his company Newsweek Media Group and others with conspiracy, money laundering and other crimes. Uzac and the then-CEO of another company, Christian Media Corporation, lied to lenders about their firms' financial health to get money to buy computer servers that was spent on other things, according to the indictment that was unsealed Wednesday.

"As alleged in the indictment, the defendants used the name of a storied Manhattan-based media company to further their financial criminal activity," Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. said in a statement Thursday.

The probe had been underway for nearly a year and a half by the time Uzac stepped down in February as chairman of Newsweek Media Group, Newsweek reported at the time. His departure came about two weeks after the DA's office visited the company's Financial District offices.

Uzac denied the allegations and argued Vance targeted him because the International Business Times, another website the company publishes, reported on political donations to Vance from a lawyer for disgraced movie mogul Weinstein.

The October 2017 story says the lawyer, David Boies, gave $10,000 to Vance's campaign after Vance declined to bring charges against Weinstein for allegedly groping an Italian model in 2015.

"Within 60 days of IBT publishing the story, the DA ordered that our server room be raided," Uzac said in a statement he posted to Twitter Wednesday night. "For the government to dare raid a media company's servers no matter what the circumstances is crossing a line and a violation of the First Amendment and the Freedom of Press."

Uzac also said the report created a "firestorm" that "badly bruised the DA's office" and almost cost Vance his re-election last year. While Vance faced scrutiny last year, he easily won another term last November with more than 182,000 votes while his competitor, write-in challenger Marc Fliedner, won about 12,000.

One of the reporters who authored the initial IBT story, Jay Cassano, disputed Uzac's characterization of the DA's probe. While he criticized Vance's treatment of sexual assault survivors, Cassano said the DA's office never threatened reporters in a way that would violate the First Amendment.

"(W)hat I find far more deplorable is @EtienneUzac using my reporting on the circumstances surrounding those horrific cases of sexual assault in an attempt to construct the flimsiest of defenses for his alleged money laundering," Cassano wrote on Twitter Wednesday night.

Newsweek's own reporting on the DA's investigation sparked turmoil within the 85-year-old magazine. Newsweek Media Group in February fired two top editors and a reporter who were involved in a story that reported details of the probe. Other staffers subsequently resigned.

(Newsweek Magazine sits on a newsstand in October 2012 in New York City. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)