Blaze destroys notorious riverfront restaurant where The Blaz took bribes

LIC Post 

A fire tore through a well-known shuttered waterfront restaurant in Long Island City early Tuesday, Oct. 10.

The blaze broke out at 4-01 44th Dr. — the site of a dilapidated former restaurant called Waters Edge that sits atop a barge — and the FDNY responded to the scene after receiving a 911 call at around 6:45 a.m. an FDNY spokesperson said.

Video footage posted online shows smoke billowing up from the two-story building while flames can be seen through the large windows facing 44^th Drive on the second floor, above the lobby area.

Around 60 firefighters from 12 units responded to the scene and brought the blaze under control just after 7:30 a.m., the FDNY said. At least two tower ladder trucks were put into operation, the footage shows.

The Queens/LIC Post arrived on the scene minutes after the fire had been extinguished. Several of the lobby windows facing 44^th Drive were smashed as well as windows facing the East River. The lobby area had extensive fire damage.

It is unclear what sparked the blaze, with the FDNY spokesperson saying the cause of the fire is under investigation. However, one firefighter at the location told the Queens/LIC Post that the abandoned restaurant was being used by homeless people, and they may have started the fire by accident.

There were no reported injuries.

 The abandoned restaurant, which first opened in 1980, has been closed for years and has a storied life having once stood as one of Long Island City’s most preeminent dining destinations with a spectacular view of midtown Manhattan.

It hosted countless weddings, birthday bashes and political fundraisers — including scandal-hit dinners for former mayor Bill de Blasio – and in April, the Queens/LIC Post reported that the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) planned to demolish the structure once it received the necessary funds. DCAS said it would take eight months to destroy the structure after the funds are received.

In 2008, restaurateur and philanthropist Harendra Singh and his Singh Hospitality Group acquired the premises.

But by the early 2010s, Singh began getting into financial difficulty and was reported to have owed the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in back rent on the Water’s Edge barge lease.

DCAS was threatening to terminate the lease and Singh had also failed to pay for renovations to the pier where the barge was docked, which the agency said were required by his lease, according to THE CITY.

Singh held two fundraising events for Bill de Blasio at Waters Edge in the hope of currying favor with city hall: one in 2011 when de Blasio was still public advocate; and the second in October 2013 shortly after he beat former city Comptroller Bill Thompson in a runoff before taking the general election.

De Blasio’s campaign did not pay for the events until it forked out a check for $2,613.01 after the city’s Campaign Finance Board began auditing the campaign. Until that moment, the events were essentially an illegal free gift from Singh to de Blasio that the mayor’s campaign had failed to disclose to the public as required, according to THE CITY.

When he got into office, De Blasio instructed one of his top aides to step in with regard to resolving Singh’s lease. But before the matter could be sorted out Singh was arrested in September 2015 on federal corruption charges in Nassau County unrelated to the Water’s Edge restaurant.

 

Ed Magnano and wife convicted of bribery charges

 

NY Post

 
Former Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano and his wife, Linda, have been found guilty at their seven-week corruption retrial on Long Island — and each now faces as much as 20 years prison.

In a late-morning split verdict Friday, a jury found Mangano guilty of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from ex-restaurant owner Harendra Singh in exchange for the once powerful pol’s help in securing more than $20 million in loans.


Ed was cleared of a single count of extortion. He was also cleared of charges that alleged he swung to Singh a lucrative contract to provide bread and rolls to the county jail, and a second contract to feed the county’s emergency workers after Hurricane Sandy.

But he could still go to prison for two decades under the one top-count conviction.
The same jury found Linda guilty of four of the five counts against her: two for obstructing justice and two for making false statements, all to cover up the bribe scheme. Ed was also convicted of a single obstruction charge.

She, too, faces a potential two-decade prison term.
 
The two are maintaining their innocence, and said they will appeal the verdicts in the case, which proved an embarrassment for Mayor de Blasio.

At both this trial and last year’s mistrial, Singh testified under a cooperation agreement that he was a big donor and had the mayor at his beck-and-call.

This may be why the co-mayors went to South Carolina this weekend. Bill took a lot more from Singh and he has also anointed his wife with a plum job running the Advance for New York fund and the funding government void THRIVE mental health program.

 

The case against Bill de Blasio

From the NY Times:

When a New York restaurateur who had donated to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s campaign grew increasingly desperate to get a lease renewed, he sent an email directly to one of the city’s most powerful people: Emma Wolfe, a top aide to the mayor.

“Hope you had a great holiday season,” the restaurateur, Harendra Singh, wrote in January 2015. “I would love to speak with you at your convenience.”

Ms. Wolfe took just nine minutes to respond: “Absolutely,” she wrote, “let’s talk on Monday.”

A meeting was soon arranged — part of a longstanding effort that federal prosecutors say Mr. de Blasio and his aides undertook to help Mr. Singh in return for campaign contributions.

The emails were among a raft of evidence related to the alleged scheme that was revealed in Federal District Court here on Wednesday, as part of a case that has revived discussions of possible impropriety by Mr. de Blasio, despite his not actually being involved in the trial.

From the Daily News:

Asked if de Blasio ever called him and solicited donations, Singh replied, “He was always looking for money for himself.”

In court in Central Islip, L.I., Singh made clear that he openly discussed his ties to the mayor with top de Blasio aides as he sought their help resolving a rent dispute with the city.

And they responded by pressuring the Department of Citywide Administrative Services to go easy on back rent he owed for the restaurant he owned on city land in Queens.

In a March 22, 2014, email to top de Blasio aide Emma Wolfe, Singh wrote, “I humbly request you to get me some time to get some issue in front of some City officials. I am very loyal and very early friend of Bill and not (to) be able to get in touch with anyone is a little heart wrenching.”

Soon after, one of Wolfe’s assistants responded, “happy to see if I can help.”

De Blasio to crooked donor: “Do what you’ve got to do.”

From the Daily News:

A major donor to Mayor de Blasio dropped a bombshell Thursday, testifying under oath that when he told Hizzoner he’d have to arrange illegal campaign donations, de Blasio offered a stunning response:

“Do what you’ve got to do.”

Harendra Singh, a former Queens restaurateur who threw free fund-raisers for the mayor and raised thousands of dollars for him, said the mayor twice took a look-the-other-way approach when he broached the subject of illegal contributions.

It’s unclear when the exchanges took place, and whether de Blasio was a mayoral candidate or in office at the time.

Singh, 59, is testifying as a prosecution witness in the trial of a Long Island politician, ex-Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano. Mangano’s wife, Linda, and former Oyster Bay Town Supervisor John Venditto are also on trial.

Singh’s pleaded guilty to bribery charges and stated he raised funds for de Blasio to win favorable treatment from City Hall over a lease dispute involving his restaurant, Water’s Edge.

Prosecutors have said a top de Blasio aide, identified by sources as Emma Wolfe, pressured city managers to treat Singh favorably.

Last March prosecutors announced de Blasio and his minions would not be charged with criminal activity, but they made a point of saying they’d done favors for donors.

2 de Blasio donors charged, but not de Blasio himself

From the NY Times:

A major donor to Mayor Bill de Blasio pleaded guilty to using campaign contributions as bribes to buy better treatment at City Hall — and yet the mayor, who took the money and aided the donor, was not charged with a crime.

Another donor pleaded guilty to honest services wire fraud that included making political contributions in exchange of official action — and again, no charges for the mayor.

The outcome has led some, including the WNYC radio host Brian Lehrer, to an obvious question.

“How can someone be guilty of giving you a bribe and you not be guilty of taking it?” Mr. Lehrer asked Mr. de Blasio on Friday.

It’s abundantly clear,” the mayor said. But it wasn’t.

“This man did a lot of bad things in a lot of places,” Mr. de Blasio said of Harendra Singh, a restaurateur who pleaded guilty to bribing the mayor. “I’m someone who never did, never would be involved in such an effort.”

Several factors were in play.

The United States Supreme Court set a much higher bar for public corruption cases with its 2016 ruling that reversed the bribery conviction of the former Virginia governor, Bob McDonnell. In the ruling, the court determined that making introductions or setting up meetings, even in exchange for gifts or financial benefits, did not constitute a crime.

As a consequence, several prominent corruption convictions were set aside, and prosecutors have become more cautious in taking on such cases.

Furthermore, bribery cases against elected officials based on campaign contributions are rare, the legal experts said. That is in part because the Supreme Court has drawn a clear distinction between a legal contribution to a political campaign and other kinds of payments like cash, gifts or other benefits that in effect go into the pocket of a public servant.

It may also have been that it was simply easier for prosecutors to bring charges against the person buying access, because the men admitted guilt, in the face of abundant evidence, as part of plea deals in which they agreed to cooperate with the government against other defendants. Mr. Singh is a witness in corruption trials on Long Island; Mr. Rechnitz testified against a labor official who was accused of steering millions of dollars of officers’ retirement funds into a hedge fund in exchange for promised kickbacks.

De Blasio donor pleaded guilty to bribery

From the NY Times:

A campaign donor to Mayor Bill de Blasio secretly pleaded guilty in federal court to bribery, admitting that he used his contributions to the mayor to try to win favorable lease terms for a restaurant he owned on city property, newly unsealed court records show.

While the court papers included no charges against Mr. de Blasio or other city officials, a federal criminal information in the case makes it clear that the donor, Harendra Singh, got something in return.

The court documents said that the mayor took steps to benefit Mr. Singh in exchange for the contributions, and that an unnamed senior aide to Mr. de Blasio arranged a meeting to pressure a city agency to offer more favorable terms to Mr. Singh.

Last March, federal prosecutors who had investigated Mr. de Blasio’s fund-raising decided not to bring criminal charges against the mayor based on what they described as a high burden of proof and the challenge of proving corruption without “evidence of personal profit.”

Mr. Singh’s plea hearing occurred in a sealed Long Island courtroom before United States District Court Judge Sandra J. Feuerstein on Oct. 17, 2016; Mr. Singh said that his donations were intended as part of a quid pro quo, according to a transcript of the hearing.

“I gave these donations to the elected official in exchange for efforts by that official and other city officials to obtain a lease renewal from the city agency for my restaurant on terms that were favorable to me,” he said.

Mr. Singh did not name the mayor, and the court documents refer instead to an “Official #2” who received the donations; various details in the documents make it clear that the unnamed official is Mr. de Blasio.