Then-State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos gave “intelligence” to son Adam Skelos’ employers about where Hurricane Sandy money would be going, the company’s CEO testified Monday.
In the weeks after the superstorm ravaged Long Island, Adam Skelos was in contract talks to go to work for a stormwater cleaning company called AbTech — and his dad gave inside info on where federal relief money would be going, CEO Glenn Rink testified.
Rink, testifying in the father and son’s corruption trial in Manhattan Federal Court, recounted a conversation that his right-hand man Bjornulf White had on the phone with the Skeloses that had him “extremely excited.”
White told him he’d been on the phone with Adam when his dad — a Long Island state senator — chimed in with “intelligence about the opportunity” created by the storm’s damage.
He said Skelos was “working closely with the governor on planning” and offered information about “where the money would be flowing.”
DEAN SKELOS’ SON ADAM WAS RICH DURING ‘FINANCIAL TROUBLES’: RECORDS
Rink said he thought that information would help his company target municipalities that might be interested in his product. “We believed that to know where the opportunity is and money’s going to be … that has value,” he said.
The AbTech job — which the feds say Adam landed thanks to undue pressure from his powerful pop — was only one of Adam Skelos’ jobs. He also did saleswork for a utilities company, where he also tried to cash in on his dad’s influence.
Jurors heard a wiretapped conversation of the younger Skelos trying to push a Greek diner association head into doing business with him.
JEFFERSON SIEGEL/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Adam Skelos arrives at Manhattan Federal Court on Monday.
The man, Demetrios Raptis, told him in the call last Dec. 22 he wanted to push off a meeting with him until after the holidays — but the short-tempered Senate scion didn’t feel like waiting.
“Every time you call me, you see my father’s name in the paper, right?” he asks.
DEAN SKELOS CORRUPTION TRIAL BEGINS
“No,” Raptis replies.
“You have my cellphone number,” Skelos lectured. “It’s a privilege to have that number. Now if you want to utilize my f–king reach and business opportunity, then you call me and I’ll set up a meeting.”
He also suggested that doing business with him could have had other benefits as well.
“Do you think I’m limited to, to, to gas? Is that it?” he rants. “I’m not going to say this on the phone. You could have heard those opportunities in person, but you wanted to not do that.”
At the end of the call, he tells Raptis to “lose my number.”
dgregorian
TAGS: dean skelos , adam skelos ,new york corruption
