‘Culture of Corruption’: 70 NYC Housing Authority Workers Accused of Kickback Schemes, Bribery

Law enforcement arrested a large group of New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) workers and contractors on Tuesday regarding a corruption case.

Prosecutors say city and federal officials made the arrests in the case that is one of the biggest such roundups in the history of the Justice Department, NBC New York reported.

“As we allege, the 70 defendants charged today allegedly demanded over two million dollars in bribe money from contractors in exchange for giving out over 13 million dollars of work on NYCHA buildings,” Southern District of New York attorney Damian Williams said during a press conference.

“And if the contractors didn’t pay up, the defendants wouldn’t give them the work. That’s classic pay to play and this culture of corruption at NYCHA ends today,” he continued:

Williams said about 70 individuals were charged related to corruption and kickback schemes that happened between 2013 and 2023 at the organization’s facilities.

“The alleged kickback schemes included construction, maintenance and no-bid contracts for essential services like plumbing at nearly a third of the public housing buildings where ‘extorting was business as usual,'” the NBC report said.

Authorities worked on the case for more than a year, the outlet continued, noting there are nearly 340 NYCHA developments, and bribery allegedly happened at nearly 100 of those places.

Video footage shows officials accompanying one of the suspects down a sidewalk:

In September 2021, CBS New York reported that several contractors were accused of bribing supers at NYCHA housing developments, and prosecutors apparently had undercover video evidence of the exchanges:

Per the recent case, NYCHA Chief Executive Officer Lisa Bova-Hiatt said, “The individuals allegedly involved in these acts put their greed first and violated the trust of our residents, their fellow NYCHA colleagues and all New Yorkers. These actions are counter to everything we stand for as public servants and will not be tolerated in any form.”