Union ranks revolt
Correction members seek board trial
Norman Seabrook, the Ferragamo-loving, indicted and ousted president of the city correction-officers union, is not the only one in hot water over charges he misused the organization’s funds.
The entire Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association board is now being threatened with internal charges that could get them all booted from their positions, The Post has learned.
On Friday, COBA recording secretary Karen Belfield received a letter from union member Patrick Alicea, who demanded that COBA’s 9,000 members get a chance to say what they think about Seabrook’s $20 million investment in a hedge fund facing cash-flow problems, as well as the board’s role in allowing it to happen.
Seabrook invested COBA’s funds, including pension money, into the Platinum Partners hedge fund because he had been promised a cut of the profits by money manager Murray Huberfeld, Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara charged last month as he announced the then-union chief ’s indictment.
Seabrook was replaced as COBA president by Elias Husamudeen a few days later.
But Alicea, who has been a correction officer for five years, said Husamudeen and the rest of the 16-member board should be held responsible for failing to police Seabrook’s investment, which “has placed member’s funds in serious risk.”
“By not asserting themselves, and ensuring that their voices were heard in all association decisions, transactions and financial movements on the members’ behalf, they have allowed a situation to occur where the membership was damaged irreparably,” Alicea’s letter said.
COBA bylaws allow any active union member to bring charges of alleged violations against other active members. Normally, such allegations would be handled by the board, but because they are being aimed at the board’s mem- bers, Alicea has requested a vote by COBA’s 9,000 members instead.
“I want an emergency meeting with the membership, and at that meeting we need to vote on who we want in and who we want out,” said Alicea, who works at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center on Rikers Island. “I want change. It’s time for change.”
A COBA spokesman declined to elaborate on the letter.
“We’re not going to litigate these issues in the press,” the rep said.
Seabrook has already denied the government’s allegations through his lawyer, Paul Shechtman.
Seabrook was arrested in June after the feds nabbed a cooperating witness, real-estate investor Jona Rechnitz, who said he personally handed Seabrook $60,000 in a black Ferragamo man purse in exchange for directing COBA money to Platinum. Rechnitz, who is cooperating in a number of federal corruption probes, said he introduced Seabrook to Huberfeld after Seabrook complained it was time “Norman Seabrook got paid” for handling COBA’s investments.