The Empire Page

The corruption of elected officials, public officials, and persons holding the fiduciary trust of the public-at-large continues to grow. Maybe it has always been at these levels and we are only now more routinely uncovering and disclosing it.

          It seems you can’t open a newspaper or look at an online news service without one of its main stories being the abuse of power by a public official. It’s ubiquitous. And in many of these situations, these same people were either elected by the people or were put into their positions because they were respected members of either the community or the clergy. These are not people you would do background checks on prior to hiring them. But maybe this is exactly what we need to start doing.

          Let’s take a look at the recently disclosed situation that occurred in New Jersey. Yes, New Jersey, the home of Tony Soprano. A 10 year federal probe initially was focusing on a money laundering network that operated between Brooklyn, Deal, New Jersey and Israel. The network was laundering tens of millions of dollars through Jewish charities controlled by rabbis in New York and New Jersey.

          The probe then centered on corrupt politicians. Tens of thousands of bribes were paid to politicians and public officials to get approvals for buildings and other projects in New Jersey. In all 44 people were arrested in a state where 130 public officials have pleaded guilty or have been convicted since 2001.

          Here is the breakdown of who was arrested: The mayors of Hoboken, Ridgefield, and Secaucus; the deputy mayor of Jersey City; two New Jersey state assemblymen; five rabbis in New York and New Jersey; and a member of the governor’s cabinet resigned in haste after his home was searched by Federal investigators. Additionally, one of the accused public officials was found dead of suspicious circumstances.

          Now, this is situation was uncovered by one federal probe in one area of the country. As a professionally trained auditor, my instincts tell me that if I do another ten probes into other areas in the New York/New Jersey area alone, I will find similar abuses and criminal acts to the same degree they were found in this probe.

          This is a cancer. It cannot be cured. There is not enough Federal or state investigators to find and expose all of the corruption. Power corrupts, and when the public is apathetic (or maybe numb) to the abuses, the cancer grows. The old Mel Brooks line from History of the World – Part I applies to this situation “It’s good to be the King”. Members of the Senate in the Roman Empire were guilty of the same abuses of power.

          The real question is: How do we instill honesty and integrity back into our public officials?