Contractor: only way to earn construction bids in N.J. is to bribe officials or make political contributions
Former Newark Deputy Mayor Ronald Salahuddin is shown speaking to Mayor Cory Booker in this 2009 file photo. At Salahuddin's corruption trial Wednesday, contractor Nick Mazzocchi testified that the only way to win municipal construction bids in New Jersey is to bribe officials or make political contributions.TRENTON — Nick Mazzocchi boasts his demolition company could have taken down the Empire State Building.
Built up over four decades, Mazzocchi commanded the state’s largest army of excavators, high rise cranes, and heavy trucks.
But Mazzocchi said none of that mattered when it came to winning public contracts in the Garden State. Under bruising cross-examination in federal court Wednesday, Mazzocchi told jurors his road to success was paved with bribes and political contributions.
"In these municipalities they can control whatever they want," Mazzocchi said in federal court. "They can throw all the bids out and re-bid it until their favorite son gets the job."
On Mazzocchi’s third day on the stand in the corruption trial of former Newark Deputy Mayor Ronald Salahuddin, he painted a portrait of a state beset with corruption, where money speaks louder than qualifications.
It wasn’t enough to have the largest demolition firm in the state, Mazzocchi said to Salahuddin’s defense attorney, Thomas Ashley. He said he would be shut out of bids were it not for the hundreds of thousands of dollars he had paid in bribes and political donations.
Though Mazzocchi, 56, admitted to bribing numerous public officials, union leaders and political bosses, he said he never bribed Salahuddin, 61, or his co-defendant Sonnie Cooper, 68. Both are on trial in U.S. District Court in Trenton on charges of bribery and extortion.
"Did you ever give Mr. Salahuddin one dime for his efforts?" Ashley asked. Mazzocchi said no.
What Mazzocchi did give Salahuddin was thousands of dollars in political contributions for Booker and Newark Now, the mayor’s nonprofit organization. Shortly thereafter Mazzocchi received contracts worth more than a million dollars in city demolition work, according to testimony and tapes.
U.S. Attorneys contend Salahuddin had a financial stake in Cooper’s local demolition business and used his sway in City Hall to steer the contracts to Mazzocchi, who then subcontracted to Cooper.
After catching Mazzocchi bribing another contractor in 2005, the FBI hauled him in and said he would be prosecuted unless he wore a wire in dealings throughout the state, according to testimony.
An FBI videotape shows Mazzocchi giving a $5,000 check to Salahuddin, who said he would take it to Mayor Cory Booker’s then-chief of staff, Pablo Fonseca. "When I hand him this with mine and Sonnie’s (donations), it’s locked in," Salahuddin said of the contracts.
Mazzocchi said that in the world of New Jersey municipal contracting there is no distinction between a bribe and a political contribution. Without paying one or the other, he said, there was little chance of his company scoring contracts.
"That is a shakedown," Mazzocchi said. In earlier testimony he had said, "I make political contributions because I learned over the years that not making them, I lost tens of millions of dollars."
For that reason, Mazzocchi said, he has donated to Gov. Chris Christie, former Bayonne mayor Joseph Doria and Booker, among others.
"Was Cory Booker shaking you down?" Ashley asked Mazzocchi.
"I believe so," he replied. "I believe all politicians are shaking you down."
But in his decades-long career, Mazzocchi said, he also made hundreds of thousands of dollars in actual bribes to public officials.
Mazzocchi sold his business in 2007 to LVI Services, a national demolition firm, for about $26.5 million. He stayed on for several years to manage the company’s transition.
He will face more cross-examination today.