Mario Cuomo, Andrew Cuomo, John Gotti, and all the Bush family together in a Florida insurance scam involving HUD.... take a look..this is what was on 60 minutes on Sunday and I suspect it is connected to the FBI raid on the HUD Denver office last week.... It may be that with the NY election over, Clinton has finally decided to do to Andrew Cuomo what Andrew Cuomo tried to do to him..... -----Original Message----- From: virtual agent [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2000 8:39 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Whistleblower Debuts New Column (Media Release) For Immediate Release: WHISTLEBLOWER DEBUTS NEW COLUMN Retired Navy intelligence officer and former government insider Al Martin, who testified before the congressional Kerry Committee and Alexander Committee regarding Iran-Contra crimes and coverups, debuts his new column "Behind the Scenes in the Beltway." A provocative and controversial analysis of current news and commentary, the column begins by asking, "What will it be like with George Bush Jr as president? It will be a return to the 'Bush' form of government -- namely a government of shadow cliques, secret commissions and defacto star chambers." It continues by stating that "you have to look at the entire Bush Family in this context -- as if the entire family ran a corporation called 'Frauds-R-Us.' Each member of the family has his own specialty of fraud. George Jr's specialty was insurance and security fraud. Neil's specialty was real estate fraud. Prescott's specialty was banking fraud. Wally's specialty was securities fraud. And George Sr.'s specialty? All of the above." Al Martin also comments on the background of the infamous National Heritage Insurance fraud of Florida recently profiled on CBS "60 Minutes." His Just released book, "The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran Contra Insider" is available for $19.95 at 877-776-9004 The website, Al Martin Raw (http://www.almartinraw.com) is the exclusive distributor of his new column "Behind the Scenes in the Beltway." 4. JANUARY 1999 ARTICLE ON CUOMO'S PAST INVOLVEMENT WITH FINANCIAL FRAUD IS IN AMERICAN SPECTATOR January 1999 Banking On Andy Cuomo HUD Secretary and rising Democratic star Andrew Cuomo wants to go places--assuming he can leave some baggage behind. SAM DEALEY & JAMES RING ADAMS It couldn't have been more straightforward. The Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee had a form. The form was entitled "Statement for Completion by Presidential Nominees." The nominee was President Clinton's choice for housing secretary, 41-year-old Andrew Cuomo, who was to complete the questionnaire and return it before his confirmation hearing in January 1997. Simple, no? Evidently not. One question read: "Give the full details of any civil or criminal proceeding in which you were a defendant, or any inquiry or investigation by a Federal, State, or local agency in which you were the subject of an inquiry or investigation." One of the cases he listed, Smith v. Cuomo, et al., had been brought against him and others by the owner of a south-Florida savings and loan, alleging an illegal takeover attempt. But Cuomo failed to disclose a later suit, brought by the S&L itself, and settled only two months before his hearing.Why? Perhaps because Oceanmark v. Cuomo, et al. revealed that in 1988, federal banking regulators investigated Cuomo and fellow investors for possible change-in-control violations. The nominee should have listed that investigation, too, in answer to the second part of the question. He did not. How serious is this? Reagan White House aide Edwin Meese was investigated by an independent counsel for incomplete personal financial disclosures. Several Reagan administration officials were prosecuted in the Iran-contra matter for withholding information from Congress. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has his own special prosecutor, probing the question of false statements to Congress. And then there's Cuomo's predecessor at HUD, Henry Cisneros, who resigned in the face of an independent counsel investigation. The allegation?Making false statements to the FBIabout pay-offs to a blackmailing mistress during a routine background check. The Justice Department apparently has not investigated Cuomo's responses. But it has looked at him for another reason. The issue:Did Cuomo retaliate against Oceanmark by pressuring the federal agency charged with thrift oversight to close the S&L? After a preliminary investigation, Attorney General Janet Reno concluded that the standard for appointing an independent counsel had not been met. Yet Reno's inquiry was narrowly tailored. Abroader review of Cuomo's involvements with Oceanmark reveals serious questions of bank-regulation skirting. Some of Cuomo's fellow investors in Oceanmark are also prominent figures in an array of political and financial scandals. And the secretary clearly grows anxious when asked about his past business associates and their affairs. HUD lawyers even threatened a lawsuit when TAS submitted detailed questions. Most notable among Cuomo's past associates is Michael Blutrich, head of the law firm which Cuomo joined as a $150,000-a-year partner in 1985. Blutrich recently pled guilty to looting an insurance company in Florida of some $237 million, some of which went into a business controlled by the Gambino crime family. Andrew Cuomo would like to play down his close relationship with Blutrich and dismiss it as a thing of the distant past, but financial disclosure documents show a relationship lasting practically to the day of Cuomo's Senate confirmation hearing as HUD secretary in 1997. THE SON ALSO RISES As the eldest son of Democratic lion Mario Cuomo, Andrew had one of the best educations in hands-on politics. He got into the game at 16, helping in his father's first state-wide race. He took part in Mario's losing bid for mayor of the Big Apple in 1977, and in his successful run for lieutenant governor a year later. But Andrew's real start came in 1982 when, at 24, he ran his father's winning gubernatorial campaign. In a primary against the formidable New York City Mayor Ed Koch, Andrew led the campaign from 37 points down to a victory margin of four. In the general run-off against the vastly better financed Republican Lew Lehrman, Andrew again prevailed. The uphill victories testified to Andrew's burgeoning campaign and management skills. During his father's years in the governor's mansion, young Cuomo refined his political touch. He campaigned hard for Walter Mondale's presidential bid, bringing in savvy media consultants. And he was largely responsible for staging one of his father's most memorable moments, the carefully crafted speech at the 1984 Democratic National Convention. Young Cuomo also got an education in hard-nosed politics. In 1983, the New York State Investigation Commission (SIC) concluded that Cuomo and two other aides--including current NBC News star Tim Russert--bullied members of the allied Liberal Party to support a Cuomo-favored candidate to head the party. According to the SIC report, the three men "intervened in the internal affairs of the Liberal Party in order to obtain a resolution of the factional dispute." Party members testified that the governor's aides threatened them with the loss of lucrative state jobs and patronage if the party's fight was not resolved in a way "acceptable" to the governor. After this brush with notoriety, Andrew left Albany in 1984 for Manhattan to join the staff of New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. In 1985 he became a partner in the Park Avenue law firm of Blutrich Falcone & Miller, a haven for his dad's financial boosters. One partner, Lucille Falcone, was Mario's chief fundraiser and, according to reports, Andrew's girlfriend. In his memoirs the governor even wrote he would likely join the firm when he left public service. (It ceased to exist before he could do so.) Also in 1985, Andrew took a leaf from the playbook of his future brother-in-law Joseph Kennedy, who had started his career by founding a non-profit corporation to provide low-cost heating fuel to the poor. Andrew's variant was a non-profit called Housing Enterprise for the Less Privileged (HELP), which provides transitional homes and services to the homeless. In 1988 he quit his law practice to work full-time as president of HELP, a post he manned until joining HUD as assistant secretary for community planning and development in 1993. Cuomo's zeal for philanthropy turned not-so-neighborly, however, when community legislators questioned the location and size of HELP projects, and when they attempted to slow what they saw as the non-deliberative, willy-nilly speed with which those project proposals were approved. One of these communities was Westchester County, a largely affluent New York suburb whose liberal denizens were shocked at the prospect of a housing project in their backyards. Paul Feiner, then a county legislator who was skeptical toward HELP, says Cuomo interrupted a telephone conversation one night in 1988 with an emergency breakthrough by an operator. Cuomo's call was a tongue-lashing for Feiner's position on HELP. "There was a tremendous amount of pressure," recalls Feiner. At the time he told a reporter that Cuomo had threatened him, saying, "I'll ruin your career. I'll break every bone in your body," unless Feiner supported the project. Cuomo dismissed these allegations. "It's sad that [Feiner's] mind would work in such a way," he said. "I think it's even ethnically disparaging." Now the Democratic supervisor of a Westchester town who holds a seat on HELP's advisory board, Feiner hardly seems out to get Cuomo. In fact, he calls HELP a "total success" and says that "perhaps without the pressure it would have been impossible to get the complex built.... But I would have preferred a little more compromising with the community. It was a bad taste of government where things were being rammed through." THE OCEANMARK BOG Notwithstanding such unpleasantness in the non-profit sector, it's one of Andrew's for-profit ventures that has now come back to haunt him. As a corporate lawyer in the Blutrich firm, he represented a group that in 1986 decided to invest in a family-owned, federally chartered savings and loan in North Miami Beach called Oceanmark. Andrew himself was also one of the investors. The original owners of the thrift, the Fenster family, had lived in Florida for generations, and they soon concluded that they were losing control of the bank to outsiders who wanted to plunder its assets and discard the shell. Their suspicions were aroused by the accidental discovery that what they called Cuomo's "New York Group," supposedly five major investors, consisted of at least 22, who among them controlled more than half of Oceanmark's stock. Concealed takeover groups are a major no-no in financial regulation, and Cuomo's group had filed none of the required change-in-control papers. So the Fensters' lawyers hit them with the first of what has become a series of lawsuits. A constant theme in this convoluted legal history is the political well-being of Andrew Cuomo. The New York Group offered to settle this first suit in 1990, just an hour before the Fensters' legal team was set to take a deposition from Andrew. (Several months before, Cuomo had backed out of another scheduled deposition, submitting an affidavit that he was sick with nausea, diarrhea, and headaches. The next day the New York Post had run a picture of Cuomo, wearing black tie at a party the previous night, over the caption, "He's one sick puppy.") As part of the deal, Lynn Fenster and her family signed off on a press release apologizing to Andrew for "statements made in the heat of the moment." "I regret any personal hardship this purely business dispute may have caused Mr. Andrew Cuomo," read the release. "I have always considered him an outstanding professional and count him as a friend." The 1990 deal looked like a total victory for the Fensters. The New York investors agreed to put their stock in trust for five years and then give Oceanmark first dibs on buying it back. What the Fensters didn't know, however, was that the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) had separately investigated the New York Group and entered into a secret supervisory agreement on June 17, 1988. The agreement noted that "the FHLBB believes there is an issue as to whether there has been a violation of" control laws, but "is willing to forebear from the initiation of proceedings." The terms were that Cuomo and the other group members had to dispose of their Oceanmark stock within a year. If any remained in their hands, stated the agreement, the stock "shall be donated to Oceanmark." By acceding to the agreement's stern language, Cuomo and his fellow investors avoided any fault-based action by the FHLBB.1 1 Cuomo and the other signatories may have misled regulators in order to close the deal. According to the agreement, these stockholders, "consistent with their desire to no longer be involved with Oceanmark, have already entered into an agreement for the sale of their stock." But that's exactly what the group did not do. Despite its clear interest in knowing about the agreement, Oceanmark only learned about it by chance in early 1991. For the next three years, the thrift tried without success to get a copy from the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), the new federal regulator set up after the savings-and-loan debacle. Finally, in 1994, the Fensters took Cuomo and his group to state court in Florida, charging them with "an illegal conspiracy to commit fraud" by failing to abide by the supervisory agreement. The suit dragged on until 1996, when suddenly an armistice was reached. Oceanmark received a copy of the federal order, and the New York Group agreed to exchange their stock for a largely worthless class of non-voting shares. The bank withdrew its suit. But what astounded Lynn Fenster was the speed with which the settlement was approved. "It went through like a rocket," she says. The Fensters were especially impressed when Cuomo assured them he could clear up a residual problem with the OTS office in Atlanta, which supervises Florida thrifts. "One of the things that Andrew said," recalls Ms. Fenster, "was, 'Don't worry about a thing. I know people in Atlanta and I can take care of this.'" AN INDEPENDENT COUSEL ALL HIS OWN Why did the settlement come so quickly? To the Fensters it seemed that members of the New York Group, even those no longer active in the case, had suddenly decided to smooth the path for Andrew's career. Indeed, just three weeks later Cuomo was nominated to replace Henry Cisneros as HUDsecretary. But the Fensters were less inclined to throw rose petals on his progress. The result was a nasty face-off that led to the Justice inquiry. As part of the 1996 settlement, Cuomo asked for another public apology. This time the Fensters refused. Explains their lawyer William Friedlander, "If Oceanmark said publicly that their claim had no merit, then everything we had negotiated for--which was the right to bring it again, to dismiss it without prejudice--would have gone out the flue." According to the Fensters, Cuomo took "no" very badly, threatened reprisal, and retaliated by pushing the OTS into an extended examination aimed at closing Oceanmark down. "Within a month after we refused to do what Andrew demanded," says Friedlander, "the OTS was back on this bank like white on rice. And they ate us for lunch." When Oceanmark began receiving what its auditors saw as unusual demands concerning recapitalization requirements from OTS regulators, the Fensters appealed to the agency's ombudsman. In a letter of March 4, 1997, Oceanmark noted that the acting head of the OTS at the time, Nicholas Retsinas, was simultaneously HUD's assistant secretary for housing and the federal housing commissioner, and hence subordinate to Secretary Cuomo. The thrift alleged that Cuomo had used his authority to punish the Fensters and force a sale of Oceanmark, which, says Friedlander, would have incidentally produced a payoff on the non-voting stock held by the New York Group. The ombudsman considered the charge against Cuomo a political hot potato and passed it on to the Treasury Department's inspector general. The FBI launched its own investigation. In late July 1998, even as FBI agents were still conducting interviews, the ombudsman revisited the complaint and concluded that OTS personnel might have been "plain-spoken," but they "did not act in a retaliatory manner." He found "no information" showing Cuomo's influence. In early September 1998, the Fensters filed yet another suit, charging Cuomo, Retsinas, and current OTS Deputy Director Richard Riccobono with a "conspiracy" to ruin Oceanmark. Cuomo, they said, had used his political power to pressure the others into harassing Oceanmark. But the real news was buried deep inside the lawsuit. The Fensters said they had been interviewed by the FBI, and that the bureau appeared to be conducting its own investigation of Cuomo and his associates. In fact, Justice did conduct a preliminary investigation of Cuomo--the kind of inquiry that can lead to the appointment of an independent counsel. Reno confirmed this on September 8, 1998, when she announced her determination that "there were no reasonable grounds to believe that further investigation [by a court-appointed special prosecutor] was warranted." Then she went a step further, announcing that Justice lawyers would defend Cuomo, Retsinas, and Riccobono in the latest Oceanmark suit. Cuomo's spokesmen now cite Reno's statement in rebutting the Oceanmark charges. In a letter to TAS, "HUD staff" wrote: The real question...is will you allow your publication to be used as a mouthpiece for the bogus and self-serving allegations made by Oceanmark Bank. You are now on notice that the allegations...are false. You are also on notice that these allegations are ten years old, previously published, and now proven baseless by the Department of Justice, FBI, and Republican Senate. The publication of these statements which you now know to be false and slanderous is actionable. Your publication has a history of printing false material regarding Mr. Cuomo. The Secretary intends to pursue all legal avenues regarding this matter. 2 2 The current allegations are, of course, not ten years old, but arise from the Fensters' 1996 refusal to sign a statement similar to their 1988 apology to Cuomo. Cuomo's problems with the thrift were "previously published" in the October 1994 TAS, in connection with Oceanmark's efforts to obtain the secret supervisory agreement. The "false material" in question, HUD staff has specified, was an item on Secretary Cuomo's press conferences. (See On the Prowl, TAS, December 1997, and Correspondence, TAS, January 1998.) A similar letter to TAS from Cuomo's private lawyers states, "We intend to protect his interests and will not tolerate any purported reporting, based on smear tactics, to enhance anyone's private business agenda or to increase circulation." OTS recently withdrew its examiners from Oceanmark, and the Fensters' latest suit alleging an elaborate "Cuomo Conspiracy" seems strained at best. But there do appear to have been violations of the supervisory agreement, which federal regulators have failed to pursue--specifically the divestiture of the investors' stock. The case also puts a spotlight on some people who Cuomo perhaps wishes would remain in the dark. THE NEW YORK GROUP Heading up the New York Group was Sheldon Goldstein. Originally from Brooklyn, Goldstein moved to nearby Rockland County in the mid-fifties, where he set up shop as a real-estate developer and businessman. By the 1980's he was a millionaire several times over and had a long list of corporations to his name. Goldstein could also be a generous political benefactor. According to an analysis by Newsday, Goldstein, his family, and associates donated over $102,000 to Mario Cuomo's gubernatorial campaigns from 1982 to 1989. In the 1982 campaign alone, the Goldstein machine contributed more than $49,000. Shortly after Cuomo was first elected, Goldstein was appointed chairman of the State University Construction Fund, a lucrative patronage title. In addition to Oceanmark, Goldstein, Cuomo, and others in the New York Group shared extensive interests in two other financial institutions, Hudson United and the Savings Bank of Rockland County. Oceanmark's Lynn Fenster recalls how the New York Group operated: "Shelley Goldstein would put out a call for money, and you would go. And if you didn't go--you almost didn't have a choice. You didn't have a say. The first time you didn't bring your money--he told me this--you didn't get to go again. And the first time you ever got worried about your money or didn't want to stay there, he would literally write you a check and you would never get called again." This seems to be borne out in an April 16, 1987 memo Oceanmark obtained from Cuomo's files. "It is imperative that you and I sit down together and discuss the whole Venture deal and on Monday I will put out the call for $500,000," Goldstein wrote to Cuomo. "What Ed Wachtel [a New York Group investor] and I decided to do is call for all monies, put it in the Savings Bank of Rockland County and draw the money as we need it but to have it in the bank." Jeffrey Fenster, Lynn's brother and partner, paints a similar portrait: "Shelley would gin up an investment and he would put out a call for money. And Shelley had a thing that no one would ever lose money. He always gave them their money back if they lost money." Goldstein was also a chief client of Cuomo--and Blutrich and Falcone--at their law firm. Other aspects of the cozy Goldstein-Cuomo relationship frequently cropped up in New York papers during the mid-1980's, including: • In 1984 Arco Management won a state contract to manage the Bridge and Jackie Robinson housing projects in New York City. It later turned out that the Division of Housing and Community Renewal, the state agency that awarded the contract, had done so under a non-competitive bid. The following day the agency director claimed that the unorthodox move was in response to an emergency. The director also told the New York Times that Arco was "recommended to me but by whom I don't remember." Arco was owned by Goldstein and managed by one of his two sons, both of whom belonged to the New York Group. John O'Connell, another New York Group investor, was also a member of Arco. Andrew was his dad's right-hand man in Albany at the time, and Goldstein, as chairman of the State University Construction Fund, was a state official.3 3 Arco is currently a "prime contractor" for HUD property management in Minnesota, D.C., Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and every state east of the Mississippi River. Upon becoming HUD secretary, Cuomo recused himself from decisions directly involving Arco. • In 1987 Goldstein and Cuomo were wrapped up in a criminal and civil case and a State Investigation Committee (SIC) inquiry into a campaign quid pro quo. The allegations were that after Goldstein was denied part-ownership in a Manhattan building rented to the state, he influenced the governor's office to cancel part of the lease. Afew years earlier, while a special assistant to his father, Andrew had amended the lease. According to the Times, Goldstein told the SIC, "I threatened to ruin [the building owner] in the state of New York as a window contractor." Soon after, Goldstein resigned as chairman of the State University Construction Fund for "personal reasons," according to a state spokesman, but presumably under pressure to do so after his embarrassing admissions. Cuomo testified to the committee that he had acted in the state's best interests at the time, not Goldstein's. • In 1988, plans for a proposed thruway exit near Sterling Forest, the largest timberland tract in the New York City area, were scotched for economic and environmental reasons. The project had been pushed by Governor Cuomo. A report by the state comptroller noted that, "over the years, this project has been repeatedly rejected by past state governors and the New York State Thruway Authority as unwarranted based on the area's traffic needs and as simply a boon for private land developers." Goldstein, according to the New York Times, had extensive property interests in the area and, in 1986, attempted to purchase the 30-square-mile forest. Andrew Cuomo was his attorney in the deal. When questioned about his ties to Goldstein, Cuomo has distanced himself. "I am one of 10, 15, 20 lawyers who represent him," he told the New York Times in December 1987. But the April memo from earlier that year suggests a closer relationship. "I really don't know what you did on your taxes," Goldstein wrote Andrew. "I called and found out you filed for an extension. Please, please let's put it together or some day it will come back and bite us." THE WITNESS FORMERLY KNOWN AS BLUTRICH Another New York investor in Oceanmark was Michael Blutrich, a name partner in Cuomo's firm. In 1996 Blutrich was exposed as a target in one of the largest-ever FBI fraud probes, and in November 1998 was convicted on 22 counts of racketeering, fraud, and money-laundering. In that scam, Blutrich and others plotted with the then-chairman of the Orlando, Florida-based National Heritage Life Insurance Company to loot some $237 million from the company through inside loans and sham real-estate deals. In 1990 the Blutrich group approached Heritage and offered to invest $4 million. There was just one problem: They only had a million. So the investors illegally "borrowed" the rest from an escrow account at Blutrich's firm. Soon after, a $3-million advance for "future commissions" was drawn from the insurance company by the Blutrich group and deposited into the firm's escrow account. The investors bought land near the Catskills in New York, then billed Heritage for millions more than they had paid. Another sham loan involved a Bronx land parcel owned by 4305 Associates, a two-person corporation formed in 1988 and named for the parcel's street address. Blutrich was vice-president and 50-percent shareholder; Lucille Falcone, president and equal shareholder. Blutrich persuaded a cohort to pose as a real-estate appraiser, who valued the property at $2,346,000. It was actually worth only $700,000. Heritage made a $1.5 million loan, a large chunk of which found its way into Blutrich's pockets. Predictably, Heritage soon found itself in financial straits, and its directors became uneasy for their shareholders, 26,000 (75 percent) of whom were elderly. Two years later, the insurance company collapsed, a $440-million debacle. The Blutrich group, meanwhile, had walked away with $93 million in laundered money, and sunk over two and a half times that much in bad deals. By July 1996, Heritage's chairman pled guilty to the scam and received eight years in prison in exchange for his cooperation. Blutrich, along with several associates, was indicted the following month and has since begun to cooperate with the FBI. One of the loans that federal agents are investigating was a piddling $300,000 to underwrite Scores, a New York strip club which the Feds charge became a racket for the Gambino crime family. In exchange for testifying and helping the FBI, Blutrich recently entered the federal Witness Protection Program--and a substantially discounted lifestyle. In court documents, one of Blutrich's former associates, Shalom Weiss, charges that during the heyday of the scam Blutrich dropped $50,000 per week "supporting a lavish lifestyle and expensive habits." The lavishness included a Porsche, a yacht, and a $12,000 wristwatch, all of which he gave up as part of his plea agreement. Blutrich's expensive tastes included a passion for boys' basketball. According to Weiss, "much of Blutrich's ill-gotten gains were spent supporting or covering up" pedophilia. "He exploited the young boys he raped and molested. He beguiled the parents of the boys whose basketball teams he coached so he could meet his prurient need." In 1994, after a two-year sting, Blutrich was charged with multiple counts of sexual assault on a minor (to which he secured a sweetheart plea-bargain), and a story in the December 1998 Penthouse quotes an anonymous partner in Blutrich's law firm saying, "Everyone knew what Michael was doing with these young boys. On more than one occasion a mother of one of these boys would come up to the office screaming and complaining about what Blutrich was doing." According to the story, several sources "close to the situation" said Cuomo left the firm in 1988 in part because of Blutrich's behavior. A former partner of Cuomo's disputes this, however. "That's a total lie. No one had knowledge that [Blutrich] was involved in any of this s--t," says the source, who wishes to remain anonymous. Cuomo downplays his relationship with Blutrich. In a letter to TAS, the secretary's Fort Lauderdale attorneys wrote, "Many years ago, Secretary Cuomo practiced in a law firm with Mr. Blutrich and participated with many investors, including Mr. Blutrich, in a tax-credit syndication." In fact, along with Blutrich and Lucille Falcone, Cuomo was one of three general partners in L&M Associates, a tax-sheltered oil and gas investment. And although the partnership began many years ago (September 17, 1986), it was not until January 21, 1997--the day before his Senate confirmation hearing to become housing secretary--that Cuomo quit doing business with Blutrich and sold his interest in L&M at a loss. A monthly disbursement check to Cuomo from the venture, a copy of which TAS has obtained, bears Blutrich's signature, and an accompanying letter shows that it was mailed in 1995 to Cuomo's HUD address, with "best personal regards." Cuomo did not have to sell his stake in L&M to become secretary; he need only have recused himself from decisions involving the partnership (which he had done two weeks earlier). That he ultimately did sell seems to suggest he was troubled by doing business with an accused criminal. Yet Blutrich's fraud case had been widely reported months earlier, and Cuomo's former business associates had known about it almost immediately. "After...the firm was raided by the FBI...a former employee called me," says Cuomo's former partner. "I think that call, I'm sure, went out all over the city. And that's when I became aware that the FBI was investigating Michael in connection with Scores and the Mob." Presumably, it was only the prospect of public scrutiny that prompted Cuomo to finally withdraw his investment. BETTER LEFT UNSAID Less than a month after the ink dried on the second Oceanmark settlement in November 1996, Andrew Cuomo was nominated for HUD secretary. A month later, accompanied by his wife Kerry Kennedy (whom he had married in 1990), one of their two daughters, his mother Matilda, sister Maria, and mother-in-law Ethel Kennedy, Cuomo sailed through an adulatory confirmation hearing notable only for what was not brought up: Oceanmark Federal Savings and Loan. The chairman of the Senate committee charged with confirming Andrew was Alfonse D'Amato, whose hearty dislike for the Cuomos was well known--and generously reciprocated--after many years' rivalry in New York politics. D'Amato might have been expected to turn the hearing into a blood bath, given the ample press coverage Oceanmark had received in the preceding decade. What's more, Florida's Connie Mack also sat on the committee. AHUD lawyer confirms that a Florida GOP official sent committee members a package alerting them to the Oceanmark imbroglio. Amazingly, however, the thrift never came up. Senate Banking sources say the oversight had more to do with D'Amato protecting his own chairmanship than Andrew Cuomo's well-being. There was speculation at the time that Cuomo might challenge the New York senator in his 1998 campaign, and that he posed a significant threat. (A Mason-Dixon poll conducted at the time showed Cuomo edging out D'Amato 41-38 percent.) According to these sources, it was understood that if D'Amato could protect his seat by sequestering Cuomo on HUD's top floor, so much the better. "Generally a lot of people felt there were understandings that obviously they were going to try to stay out of each other's way," says a senior committee aide. Another reason that Cuomo's involvement with Oceanmark wasn't mentioned at the hearing may be that D'Amato had his own not-so-kosher connections to the New York Group. During the 1980's D'Amato was embroiled in a nasty HUD scandal of alleged favoritism, back-scratching, and campaign donor quid pro quos. Goldstein, a heavy D'Amato donor, and seven members of the New York Group realized a $17-million windfall from a juicy HUD packagepatched together by a senior HUDofficial, Joseph Monticciolo, and pushed through by D'Amato. Upon leaving HUD, Monticciolo became the titular head of a Goldstein investment group that included these New York Group members. Congressional and Justice probes were launched. Ultimately Monticciolo rolled and said D'Amato asked him to cover for the senator, but the case could not be made. These eight investors at one time owned nearly half of the New York Group's shares in Oceanmark, according to documents from Cuomo's files. If D'Amato wasn't going to bring up Oceanmark, neither was Cuomo--even if it meant a material omission on his nomination form. Cuomo will not explain why he did not list the Oceanmark suit among the court cases in which he had been a defendant. His HUD lawyers wrote TAS that "The FBI, Department of Justice, and U.S. Senate (Republican controlled) have all stated that all nomination forms and procedures were correctly complied with by Mr. Cuomo." But there is no public record of any such statements. What's more, according to the Office of Government Ethics, only the Senate Banking committee would have evaluated Cuomo's questionnaire. Asked why Cuomo did not divulge that he was investigated by federal banking regulators, HUD lawyers reply with word games. "Mr. Cuomo was merely a witness in connection with an FHLBB examination of Oceanmark," they claim, and consequently not directly the subject of the inquiry. Young Cuomo is considered one of the Democratic Party's fastest-rising stars. He has indicated he'd like to play a major role in Al Gore's New York campaign machine in 2000, and Washington rumor holds that he's a strong contender for the second spot on a Gore ticket. More recent speculation predicts a possible run for retiring Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's seat in 2000. The GOP opponent in that race could turn out to be none other than Alfonse D'Amato. If that's the case, you can bet the bank on one mud ball that neither candidate will be throwing. Sam Dealey is TAS's assistant managing editor. James Ring Adams is an investigative writer for TAS. Return to this month's Table of Contents. Return to The American Spectator Online. Copyright 1999 © The American Spectator. All rights reserved. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. All in one Place. http://shopping.yahoo.com/
