DOI: Blas called in favor for donor pal
Mayor de Blasio personally urged a commissioner to help a major campaign donor who was involved in a dispute with the city, a report revealed Tuesday.
It was “the first and only time” that the mayor ever called then-Department of Citywide Administrative Services Director Stacey Cumberbatch directly, according to a July 7 memo from the Department of Investigation summarizing its role in the federal corruption probe of de Blasio and top aides.
De Blasio made the phone call to Cumberbatch as a favor to restaurateur Harendra Singh, according to the memo, first obtained by The New York Times.
At the time, Singh — an early de Blasio supporter — was embroiled in a dispute with the city over the lease for Water’s Edge, a since-closed restaurant next to a publicly owned pier in Long Island City, Queens.
Several DCAS staffers were repeatedly told by de Blasio’s aides to “resolve this matter” because Singh was “a friend of the mayor,” according to the DOI.
DCAS staffers described Cumberbatch’s involvement, which included meeting Singh and top de Blasio aide Emma Wolf at City Hall in 2015, as unprecedented.
In March, federal prosecutors said that neither de Blasio nor anyone who had acted “on his behalf ” would be charged.
Singh was arrested in 2015 for several unrelated schemes, including an alleged $950,000 fraud involving federal Hurricane Sandy disaster-relief funds tied to Water’s Edge, and is currently awaiting trial.
De Blasio spokesman Eric Phillips said of the mayor’s call to Cumberbatch: “Whether or not he called her or she called him, they’ve spoken on the phone other times, and he’s certainly talked to her in person on any number of occasions.
DOI also found that de Blasio and four top aides “regularly” used personal e-mail accounts for official business.
Phillips said City Hall “frequently” reminds city officials “to use government e-mail for government work.”
“This administration makes decisions based on the facts and nothing else.”