MANHATTAN (CN) – Shaking up the New York political scene, a federal jury found Governor Andrew Cuomo’s former right-hand man Joseph Percoco guilty on Tuesday of taking bribes from heavyweight corporate donors.
Before his convictions today on three out of six counts of a 2016 indictment, Percoco had been an influential figure within New York’s most powerful political dynasty.
Former Governor Mario Cuomo, the sitting governor’s father, had considered Percoco a “third son,” earning him trust in New York’s highest seat of power for generations. The younger Cuomo, who tapped Percoco to manage both of his gubernatorial campaigns, meanwhile lamented Tuesday that the stain of corruption had hit so close to home.
"While I am sad for Joe Percoco's young daughters who will have to deal with this pain, I echo the message of the verdict – there is no tolerance for any violation of the public trust,” the governor said in a statement. "There is no higher calling than public service and integrity is paramount - principles that have guided my work during the last 40 years.
"The verdict demonstrated that these ideals have been violated by someone I knew for a long time,” Cuomo acknowledged. “That is personally painful; however, we must learn from what happened and put additional safeguards in place to secure the public trust. Anything less is unacceptable."
Although the anti-corruption crusade that brought down Percoco began in the administration of former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, the prosecutor’s successor championed Percoco’s conviction today.
Trading Bharara’s famous puns for platitudes, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman noted in a statement that Percoco had been convicted of offering up “something priceless that was not his to sell – the sacred obligation to honestly and faithfully serve the citizens of New York.”
Percoco, a 48-year-old resident of South Salem, now faces decades in prison for raking in more than $300,000 in bribes from political donors who provided his wife with low-show work.
Competitive Power Ventures paid the vast majority of that amount: Over the course of three years, Lisa Percoco collected more than $270,000 in income from the Maryland-based energy company by putting in roughly three hours of work a month on an educational initiative.
Percoco’s wife was never indicted, but the jury revealed Tuesday that they had deadlocked on a count each of bribery and conspiracy against Competitive Power Ventures executive Peter Galbraith Kelly, 54.
After a six-week trial and two weeks of jury deliberations, U.S. Attorney Berman has not yet revealed whether he will attempt to retry Kelly, whose attorney Dan Gitner has not released a statement on his client’s mistrial.
At Competitive Power Ventures, the educational initiative Lisa Percoco worked on involved soothing community opposition to the company’s fracked-gas power plant in New York’s Hudson Valley. Residents and activists there have protested outside of court for months over a fossil fuel plant that they believe to have been the product of a corrupt deal.
The chair of one of the these groups plant called Tuesday for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to probe the project's genesis.