MANHATTAN (CN) — After taking down two branches of the New York Legislature, the crusade against corruption in Albany has hit the house of the proverbial third man in the room: Gov. Andrew Cuomo's trusted former deputy.
Thick as a pulp novella and almost as tawdry, the 80-page criminal complaint unsealed Thursday morning shows Cuomo's reputed "right-hand man" Joseph Percoco giving his best audition for "The Sopranos," in referring to bribe payments as "zitti."
In another wrinkle that could have come from Mafia fiction, Percoco called one of his alleged co-conspirators "Fat Boy" and "Fat Man," according to the complaint.
Spelling out the silver screen references at a noon press conference today, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara returned to the same perch where he brought down ex-New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and ex-New York Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos.
The "Sopranos" episode in question featured the quotes "Keep the ziti flowing" and "Don't flip over the ziti wagon," he said.
But that was as playful as Manhattan's top prosecutor got in denouncing what he called the "show-me-the-money culture that has so plagued Albany."
"It turns out that the state Legislature doesn't have any sort of monopoly on crass corruption in New York," Bharara said.
Together with Silver and Skelos, Cuomo forms the third of the triumvirate known as the "Three Men in a Room," where Albany's most powerful legislators secretly conduct their business.
The governor's deputy secretary Percoco, 47, acted as a confidant to his and his father's administrations, and the son's "gatekeeper" between January 2012 and mid-2014. Percoco is charged alongside seven others, including Alain Kaloyeros, the 60-year-old president of the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute, a key figure in Cuomo's signature initiative "Buffalo Billion."
Announced during Cuomo's 2012 "State of the State" address, the initiative flushed $1 billion into the western New York metropolis bordering Lake Erie and known as "The Nickel City." The once-proud border city had been bustling economic hub, known for being a trade route to the Midwest with a booming grain, steel and automobile industry. It took a sad downturn, however, in the mid-20th century.
The departure of Midwestern industrial giants sent millions of residents elsewhere, and with them, fewer tourists to such sites as the four buildings designed there by legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
"Buffalo Billion" had been intended to restore the city to its former glory with a quick influx of cash, and FBI agent Adam Cohen told reporters that the project gave hope to Buffalonians everywhere.
"Today, there's an excitement about the future of Western New York," the agent said.
But in a betrayal by public servants, prosecutors say, Kaloyeros and others "rigged" the bids.
Bemoaning the "preordained" process, Bharara said: "Companies got rich and the public got bamboozled."
The fumbling nature of these transactions got so brazen, prosecutors say, that an executive from one of the alleged real-estate cronies asked if the exchange was "too telegraphed?"
Another Buffalo developer opined that one bid seemed "a bit obnoxious," according to the complaint.