Hospital Exec Found Guilty Of Bribing Kruger, Other Pols

A hospital executive was found guilty yesterday of bribing State Senator Carl Kruger and other Albany politicians arrested earlier this year on corruption charges.

From the New York Times:

The former executive, David P. Rosen, 63, was the first defendant to be tried as part of a federal investigation announced in March that has been seen as a stunning snapshot of the continuing problem of pervasive corruption in Albany.

At a trial this summer, prosecutors presented evidence that Mr. Rosen had funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to two of the state officials, Senator Carl Kruger and Assemblyman William F. Boyland Jr., both Democrats of Brooklyn, through sham consulting contracts. Both have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial.

They said Mr. Rosen also directed a lucrative MediSys contract to a third official, Assemblyman Anthony S. Seminerio, also a Democrat, of Queens. Mr. Seminerio, who had pleaded guilty to corruption charges in an earlier case, died in prison in January.

In return, prosecutors charged that the officials showered Mr. Rosen’s organization with state money and lobbied the state government on his behalf.

From the Daily News:

Rosen, who was the first to be tried, formerly ran Jamaica Hospital, Flushing Hospital and Brookdale University Hospital. His lawyer described him as a “hero” who helped to bring health care to poor neighborhoods – but prosecutors said he crossed the line into dirty dealing.

… “This is a sad, even tragic case,” Federal District Judge Jed Rakoff wrote in his decision. “It reveals how a widely admired hospital administrator who diligently sought to better the health care of impoverished communities nonetheless chose to entangle himself in the bribing of state legislators.”

… The three lawmakers and Rosen were “involved in a corrupt agreement or conspiracy … with a specific intent to bribe the legislators and thereby deprive their constituents of their honest services,” the judge wrote.

The case is the result of the same corruption investigation that led to the arrest of Kruger, Boyland and several others in March. With a judge now finding Rosen guilty of paying bribes to Kruger and others, a jury will have to determine – in a separate trial – if the politicians are guilty of accepting those bribes.

But, according to the New York Post, the judge in the Rosen case said the lines to Kruger were clear:

In the case of Kruger, Rosen “found it easy to enter into an even more blatantly illegal relationship” by directing MediSys to “award a lucrative vendor contract” to a hospice-care provider called Compassionate Care, Rakoff wrote.

Kruger, along with several others, ran a consulting firm that was helping Compassionate Care, for a monthly retainer of $5,000 per month, to obtain hospital contracts.

“Rosen understood Kruger to have a strong personal interest” in the contract MediSys gave Compassionate Care, Rakoff wrote.