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Feds charge real estate exec with paying off pols
Boston Herald
By Jerry Kronenberg
Tuesday, August 31, 2010 - Updated 5 minutes ago
A federal investigation originally targeting former state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson expanded today, with authorities charging businessman Martin Raffol with illegally steering campaign contributions to a who’s who of Massachusetts politicians.
The U.S. Justice Department charged Raffol, an executive with the Winn Companies, with leaning on business associates to donate to candidates - and then secretly and illegally reimbursing the donors.
Authorities claim the scheme aimed to get around campaign-finance laws that limit how much an individual can give a particular candidate.
Politicians who received money from the alleged scheme include U.S. Reps. Stephen Lynch, Barney Frank, Michael Capuano and others, as well as candidates for Massachusetts governor and Boston mayor.
Why might this be critical to Fall River? Because the Winn Companies are the primary developers of the low income housing project being built at the old Wamponoag Mills complex. The involvement of the Winn Companies in this project has been pointed out for over a year on this very blog to have the potential to implicate various elected officials and decision makers giving support to this low income housing project in just such a scheme. One has to wonder just how deep any such connection might be!
This is not the first time that Winn has been suspected of payoffs to local officials where the firm wanted to do business. In fact, the entire Winn empire has been built (no pun intended) on a well oiled machine that encompasses heavy lobbying and a pipeline of federal housing subsidy monies, property construction and renovation and property management departments in an powerful example of business vertical and horizontal integration. It's a veritable "one stop shop" for low and mixed income property development, and takes maximum advantage of leveraging federal funds for private profit.
Also interesting is Mayor Sylvanagan's stance against the "Y" project, with it's paltry few proposed low income apartments , while strongly backing the Wampanoag Mills low income apartment development! I guess the "Y" doesn't make as many campaign contributions as the friends and family of the Winn Companies.
Things that make you go " MMMMMMMMMMMMM?"
We'll be watching future developments on this story VERY carefully to see if illegalities reach the virgin souls of Fall River politicians.
Hey Laz, you do know that Winn gave a bunch of money to Carole Fiola, yeah? This came up during the Durfee St fiasco last year, because her husband was acting (some say improperly) as the finance mamnger of her campaign and then Winn or Fish or whatever it's called got the Durfee St bid after much controversy. Might be worth looking into...
ReplyDeleteMy man Shamrock comes through with the goods:
ReplyDeletehttp://speakupfallriver.blogspot.com/2009/02/beyond-reproach.html
See also: a bunch of articles circa February 2009 from the Herald Snooze, very interesting stuff in the comments sections. Search "Durfee Tech". Also found it funny that their no longer charging $800 a month to search their archives, greedy bastards :) Happy researching, I'm gonna have some fun with this one too!
Wiggy...YOU DA MAN!...I'm going to check out those files...this is too big to drop....this will have the potential to blacken A LOT of pols who were in office when the discussions to build/remodel were ongoing...LMAO!
ReplyDeleteIf my Number #1 Internet Crush CharlotteDespard is reading, she might be able to provide info on the actual contributions. If memory serves, it was her and maybe Shamrock that brought this info to light originally. Charlotte, you out there, hun? From your favorite "Beatle"... ;)
ReplyDeleteWiggy, I made sure I sent CD both articles as soon as I found them online....she's and I have discussed this scum Winn for over a year now....I had prior dealings with the guy...when he was first rolling in the big federal dough, oh, in the late 70's......he's pretty much stepped down from an active role...or so he says...maybe it was the $10,000 to Wilkerson that made the decision for him...LMAO
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