EX-CITY BIG SUES BLASIO
A former top city official is suing Mayor de Blasio for more than $5 million, claiming he was illegally fired for blowing the whistle on alleged City Hall corruption.
Ricardo Morales says his civil rights were violated when he was axed as deputy commissioner of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services in February 2017, then escorted from his office “like a common criminal.”
His “crime,” he says in a Manhattan federal court suit filed Wednesday , was refusing to help out a Queens restaurant owner who claims to have bribed the mayor.
The suit, which also names the city and DCAS Commissioner Lisette Camilo, accuses de Blasio of committing a “gross breach” of conflict-of-interest rules by intervening on behalf of supporter Harendra Singh, who at the time owed the city millions of dollars tied to his since-shuttered Water’s Edge restaurant in Long Island City.
Court papers say Morales held a series of sit-downs with Singh, culminating in a July 15, 2015, meeting at which Singh and Neal Kwatra — a lobbyist and political consultant with ties to the mayor — exploded in rage and stormed out when Morales refused to give Singh “special treatment.”
“Kwatra scolded Morales, declaring that he [Morales] obviously had not gotten the memo from City Hall,” the suit says.
Morales also claims top de Blasio aides tried to cover up a deed-restriction scandal involving Rivington House — a nursing home on the lower East Side that was sold for conversion to luxury condos — by “attempting to arrange for city officials to give knowingly false testimony” to the City Council.
Court papers say Morales later cooperated with various federal, state and local investigations, giving “truthful testimony” about alleged wrongdoing by the mayor and other city officials — leading to his firing several hours after de Blasio was interviewed by the feds on Feb. 24, 2017.”
The firing was intended “to send a severe message to all city servants about what would happen to them if they reported wrongdoing by the mayor,” the suit says.
The following month, thenacting Manhattan US Attorney Joon Kim declined to prosecute de Blasio for reaching out to various city agencies on behalf of political donors.
Singh’s admission — which de Blasio has vehemently denied — was part of an agreement to cooperate in the federal prose- cution of former Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano, who’s charged with accepting payoffs from Singh, who also owned eateries on Long Island.
Kwatra’s firm, Metropolitan Public Strategies, said “the memo from City Hall” referred to actual memos regarding repairs to a pier near Water’s Edge, and accused Morales of “trying to rewrite history and cover up his own incompetence so he can opportunistically cash in on a payday at the taxpayers’ expense.”