Ronald Salahuddin is charged with bribery and extortion
Former Newark Deputy Mayor Ronald Salahuddin is shown speaking to Mayor Cory Booker in this 2009 file photo. FBI surveillance tapes played at Salahuddin's corruption trial show him illegally steering construction contracts to a state contractor.NEWARK — On the day Mayor Cory Booker made his first state of the city address, he had vowed to end political contributions given in exchange for city contracts.
"No one with a city contract can give money to politicians in the city of Newark going forward," Booker told reporters February 7, 2007.
But that same afternoon his deputy mayor, Ronald Salahuddin, was doing just that, according to FBI surveillance tapes.
"Your contract’s the only one that’s been executed," Salahuddin told Nicholas Mazzocchi, then the state’s largest contractor in building demolition. Only two months prior, according to the tapes, Salahuddin solicited a $5,000 contribution from Mazzocchi to Booker’s nonprofit, Newark Now, telling him, "This makes you strong."
The grainy videos and audio tapes, played in U.S. District Court in Trenton today, form the backbone of the government’s case against Salahuddin and his accused co-conspirator, Sonnie Cooper. The U.S. Attorney’s office alleges Salahuddin and Cooper were business partners. Salahuddin is accused of illegally steering city contracts to Mazzocchi, who would then farm work to Cooper, a local contractor. Both are charged with multiple counts of bribery and extortion. The trial was to continue Tuesday.
Mazzocchi wore a wire for the FBI after he was caught allegedly bribing public and union officials. Starting in August 2006 he captured conversations with Salahuddin, Cooper and East Ward political boss Joseph Parlavecchio. Filled with racial epithets and coded language, the tapes — now a staple of political corruption trials in New Jersey — expose the backroom dealings behind municipal contracting in the state’s largest city.
"They’re all corrupt and they’ll all deal except for Booker," Parlavecchio told Mazzocchi in one tape, before explaining how the two men could use Sonnie Cooper’s minority status to gain city contracts.
Parlavecchio, a major player in city politics, lamented on tape to Mazzocchi that to win lucrative contracts they had to comply with city ordinances requiring minority participation.
But Parlavecchio’s role in the alleged conspiracy diminishes as Salahuddin took a larger role. By September Salahuddin, Mazzocchi and Cooper began plotting out how to win emergency, no-bid contracts from Newark. Throughout the tapes, Salahuddin does most of the talking for Cooper, but insists the two are not business partners.
"This is just friendship," Salahuddin told Mazzocchi, but he repeatedly referred to Cooper and himself when negotiating deals. "We’re not looking for the steak and potatoes. We’re just looking for a little salad," according to the tapes.
In November of 2006, Salahuddin told Mazzocchi that Booker’s chief of staff, Pablo Fonseca, was pressuring him to get donations from Mazzocchi.
"I met with Pablo. Pablo asked me for $10,000, not for himself, but for Newark Now, the mayor’s nonprofit," Salahuddin told Mazzocchi, according to the tapes. Mazzocchi then gave a $5,000 check to Salahuddin, who said he would take it to Fonseca. "When I hand him this with mine and Sonnie’s it’s locked in," Salahuddin said.
Weeks later Mazzocchi had a contract.
But the trio was eyeing much more than the occasional odd job, according to the tapes. Millions of dollars of demolition work needed to be done on the yet-to-be-constructed Prudential arena, and the city had hundreds of abandoned properties the mayor wanted razed.
"We’re trying to catch the big fish," Salahuddin said on tape, later adding, "We got four more years of this."