When Martha Stewart got sentenced to serve jail time, stemming from lying to the FBI, it was hailed as a great for justice. Now, we were told, the penalties for evading the long arm of justice were set in stone. After all, what could be more damaging to the public, than the act of lying to the FBI when they are investigating financial shenanigans. Well, apparently, the lure of high profile insider stock deals is one thing, the rigged bidding of tax payer money is another. And then, this is Connecticut, where the corrupt get off easily, because if we put them all in jail, we’d have no one left to run our state agencies. From the Courant:
A Branford man was sentenced to probation Thursday for lying to FBI agents about a scheme to rig a contract to renovate state offices at Union Station in New Haven.
Frederick “Fritz” Kelly, 51, got two years of probation from U.S. District Judge Mark R. Kravitz, who also ordered him to complete 75 hours of community service and to pay $3,000 to the state, the amount he received for his role in the bidding scheme.
During an earlier court appearance, Kelly admitted that he lied to FBI agents who questioned him twice during an investigation of corrupt dealings connected to work in 2003 and 2004 on state Department of Transportation offices on the fourth floor of the train station.
Kelly eventually admitted that he was asked by Raymond Cox, the state’s assistant rail administrator, to prepare two fake bids for the renovation job. Information presented in court shows that Cox told him to make sure the two bids were higher than one submitted by Merritt Builders, the company to which corrupt state bureaucrats planned to steer the renovation contract.
The bids were supposed to create the impression that Merritt and its owner, Louis Testa, won the contract through a legitimate competitive process.
Federal prosecutors say Kelly submitted the phony bids and later revised them to higher amounts on instructions from Cox and fellow state employee Saverio “Sonny” Sereno. The higher bids were supposed to keep Merritt looking like a bargain, even though it had increased the cost of its work through contract change orders.
Let’s not forget that Martha Stewart did eventually revise her original testimony to her “conversation” with the FBI, after lawyering up of course, when the implications of what she mislead about proved to be risky. Looks like “Frtiz” here lied twice. SO what does it say to all those bureaucrats rigging away undiscovered? This ruling says, rig away. Which is sort of a problem here in Connecticut, because it sure seems that anything with the words CT DOT contract ends up with the taint of expensive , incompetence or corrupt. Is that really the best we can do?
