Boss wrote: ↑Sat Nov 08, 2014 3:20 am
Date: September 25, 2015 | Topic: Politics | Region: San Andreas | Tags: Lobbying, Corruption, San Andreas, Los Santos, The Mayor
In San Andreas, the roots of corruption run deep
By: Adrian Ortega and Steve Marino
ast month, Otis Glassman, a community activist, civic leader, lawyer, and the former director of the Los Santos Housing Authority, was sentenced to 11 years in a federal prison after being convicted of money laundering, racketeering, embezzlement, and conspiracy. This was, at long last, the end of a criminal saga that spanned over four years and pulled together individuals from all walks of life, including politicians, businessmen, police officers, community leaders, and activists into a massive criminal conspiracy that exposed the dark depths of Los Santos' political underworld.
The influence of criminal elements in the political world has always been a part of debate and discussion, and nowhere is this influence greater than in Los Santos. Elected politicians in Los Santos have a colorful history of corruption and criminal association, ranging from former mayor Calvin Benton, who was alleged to have been a close friend of convicted mob boss and former leader of the Valenti crime family, Santino "Sonny" Valenti, to Jaime Olmos, who is currently serving time for wire fraud, extortion, and making false statements to federal agents.
Besides organized crime, big business and the wealthy elite are another major force impacting political decision-making in the state. Politicians have direct links to special interests and sometimes
are the interests themselves, as in the cases of mayors Jim and Brad Hoover, the father and son duo who served as the CEOs of two powerful investment firms, Dauphin Capital Partners and Hoover & Bassett, respectively, and former mayor Felix Mackie, the CEO of the San Andreas Network, the state's largest media conglomerate.
By focusing on several specific examples of criminal activity and unethical behavior we can examine the history and current landscape of San Andreas' and Los Santos' political culture. It is important to determine just how corrupt our politics are in order to make informed decisions about those who we trust to run our government. Although the specific inner-workings of government and the contents of backroom deals may never be known, we can at least attempt to gauge the level of corruption that exists in our politics or it will forever remain unchecked.
Yield not to temptation
The events leading to Glassman's arrest were not his first run-in with the authorities. In April 2012, federal agents raided two of Glassman's businesses: Glassman and Associates, a law firm, and Yield Not To Temptation, a charity which Glassman served as the director of. The search warrants stemmed from the same investigation which led to the arrest of disgraced Los Santos mayor Jaime Olmos, who was convicted of engaging in a racketeering conspiracy.
Although Glassman was never charged with any crime, an unsealed affidavit made in support of the warrant application alleged Glassman had accepted money from an undercover FBI agent to be used to bribe city officials to create economic redevelopment zones in areas where the undercover agent owned property. Glassman was also accused of soliciting bribes to Jaime Olmos on behalf of the undercover in order to get the undercover agent's purported girlfriend hired as a mayoral aide.
Glassman first appeared on the FBI's radar in August 2011, when he paid $1 million to retain Hector Olmos, a former San Andreas state legislator and Jaime Olmos' brother, as a consultant to lobby Los Santos city officials. The FBI suspected that such an exceptionally large and unusual payment was most likely made in order to influence Jaime Olmos through his brother.
Although the investigation into Glassman for bribery was never substantiated, his downfall eventually came when investigators discovered he was embezzling money from the charity he served as the director of. In September 2014, authorities again descended on the offices of Yield Not To Temptation, which advertised itself as a charity to promote anti-gang youth programs and keep inner city kids in school. This time, instead of search warrants, they were armed with arrest warrants for Glassman and three associates.
A federal indictment stated that Glassman had conspired with several co-defendants to funnel drug money from major level narcotics traffickers in San Andreas into the charity through anonymous donations and then either embezzled or laundered the money back into the pockets of the dealers. Prosecutors alleged that Glassman was effectively acting as a banker for several organized crime figures, including Delroy Wilcox, the drug kingpin convicted in December 2013 for presiding over one of the largest and most successful drug trafficking organizations in Los Santos history.
Some of the money went towards campaign contributions to several local and state politicians, ostensibly in support of their anti-gang efforts. However, officials believed that these were bribes, offered in exchange for political favors. The recipient of the most money from Glassman was Jaime Olmos, who is believed to have worked to benefit Glassman even from behind bars, calling in favors from political allies to make Glassman the director of the Los Santos Housing Authority, a city agency which Glassman took control over in April 2014.
When federal agents knocked on Glassman's door, he wasn't home. Glassman, tipped off by an unknown employee of the federal courthouse where the grand jury met, had already left town. For five days, Glassman was a federal fugitive. It was during this time that Glassman was alleged to have given orders through an intermediary to two members of the Money Made Mafia Bloods, a south Los Santos street gang, to burn down the offices of Yield Not To Temptation. Although the suspects, Kyree Carr and Orlando Iles, were successful in setting the fire, police had already emptied the location of relevant evidence. Carr, Iles, and Glassman were all additionally charged with arson and conspiracy. Glassman was eventually apprehended in Washington, D.C. by local authorities.
The fixer
In January 2014, the body of David Hanczuk, a retired police officer, was found washed up on the shore of Santa Maria Beach. Hanczuk, who was 54, spent 27 years as a member of the Los Santos Police Department and had been working as a private detective since his retirement in 2011. Before that, he was a decorated veteran investigator who served as the commanding officer of the department's organized crime unit and had led several high profile cases.
Before being dumped into a river in Whetstone and carried out to sea, Hanczuk was fatally shot in the driveway of a Richman estate owned by Francis Maurer, a businessman and nightclub owner rumored to have been a silent partner in the Visage, the failed Las Venturas hotel that went under less than a month after opening. Hanczuk was killed by Vincent Ricchetti, an inducted member of the Valenti crime family. Ricchetti was convicted of the murder but the motive was never determined. Police still believe there were other suspects involved in the killing.
At the time of his death, Hanczuk had been working on retainer for the Los Santos branch of the United States Reform Party and before that for local chairman and former mayor Jonathan Schrader's campaign team.
"The Reform Party send their condolences to Hanczuk's family; it's unfortunate," Schrader said when asked to comment.
When asked about the nature of Hanczuk's employment by the organization, Schrader indicated that Hanczuk had been employed as a member of the security team for Lucas Garvey, Schrader's running mate in the 2014 Los Santos mayoral election.
The 2014 mayoral election is now infamous for being an exemplar of a typical election in Los Santos, filled with scandal, conspiracy, and Machiavellian power plays. Despite leading in opinion polls by almost 75%, Jonathan Schrader was defeated by Allison Hall by a narrow margin of 14%. Political thinkers attribute the surprise results to rumors that Schrader was responsible for engaging in smear tactics against the other candidates, Bill Bloomberg, Marcus Hoffman, and Jim Weinerberg. Schrader, who has denied any wrongdoing, went on to win the next mayoral election and is now thought of as having one of the most successful mayoral terms in Los Santos history.
The rumors began when candidate Marcus Hoffman dropped out of the race following allegations made in the media that he had links to Alfredo Scaletta, an alleged mafia member and convicted criminal. Photos were released of Hoffman, his running mate, and Scaletta meeting outside a strip club in East Los Santos. Hoffman later sued the Newsflash Corporation, the media conglomerate whose newspaper originally ran the story. In the lawsuit, Hoffman testified that he had been subject to harassment and death threats from anonymous "Schrader supporters." Hoffman lost in court but his reputation was already blackened and he retired from politics.
Shortly after, recordings from a wiretap surfaced online of candidate Bill Bloomberg promising to buy a Ferrari with public funds for his alleged mistress, 18-year-old Bella Mollo. In the recording, Bloomberg was quoted as promising that she would be "counting the millions in my office [when I'm elected]."
Bloomberg fought back, stating that the audio recordings were lacking context and that he was interviewing a potential employee for his future mayoral administration, and that he was not engaged in a relationship with Mollo. Despite the leak, Bloomberg was able to win 16% of the vote.
In the last few weeks of the election, the criminal record of candidate Jim Weinerberg was leaked online. Weinerberg, who had already publicly admitted several wrongdoings, was dishonest about the time that his offenses had taken place. It was revealed that Weinerberg was arrested for grand theft auto, evading a peace officer, and battery the same month he declared his candidacy. Weinberg was interviewed by San Andreas Network news on live television about his criminal record in an interview described by viewers and critics as hostile and aggressive. The interview ended when Weineberg left and was chased down the street by cameramen. The candidates all alleged that the San Andreas Network had been paid off by the Schrader campaign.
Last month, a source from within the former Schrader administration, under the condition of anonymity, revealed to
The Arena that David Hanczuk was working as a political "fixer" and was responsible for most, if not all, of the scandal surrounding the election, and that he had been killed as a result. The source, who is confirmed as being a Schrader insider, stated that while Hanczuk was acting on behalf of individuals loyal to Schrader, Schrader himself had little to no knowledge of Hanczuk's activities and was kept isolated by his subordinates.
A former detective of the Los Santos Police Department who specialized in organized crime investigations also spoke to
The Arena anonymously. The detective stated that Hanczuk was taking orders from Patrick Durante, the underboss of the Valenti crime family, the same organization responsible for Hanczuk's death. Durante was later murdered by members of his own faction in a bloody gangland civil war that led to the demise of the Los Santos branch of
La Cosa Nostra. Although the reason for Hanczuk's assassination is still unknown, it can most likely be attributed to his political wetwork.
This election is just one of many examples of attempted or successful underworld subversion of the San Andreas political sector. A lack of oversight coupled with a powerful criminal elite means organized crime elements will surely attempt to force themselves into almost all aspects of municipal and state politics. The case of David Hanczuk is a prime example of the length criminals are willing to go in order to ensure their interests are protected in City Hall and the State House.
Every aspect of Hanczuk's story is politics and crime intertwined, from his employers to his associates to his killers; even the place where he was murdered--on the steps of the house of the father of the mayor.
Money equals speech
On April 2, 2014, the Supreme Court struck down struck down certain limits on federal campaign contributions, freeing wealthy donors to give more money directly to congressional candidates. In
McCutcheon v. FEC, conservative justices sided with the idea that money equals speech, and that speech should be limited as little as possible. In his opinion for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that Congress may only target a specific kind of corruption — the quid pro quo type, where, say, a donor gives money with the understanding that the politician will do a specific thing in return.
"Money in politics may at times seem repugnant to some," Roberts wrote. "But so too does much of what the 1st Amendment vigorously protects. If the 1st Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests, and Nazi parades — despite the profound offense such spectacles cause — it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition."
Since the landmark
Citizens United case in 2010, the floodgates have been opened to advocacy groups, for- and not-for-profit corporations, labor unions, and other associations who want to push as much money as they want into the public sphere. Despite opposition, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote about independent spending, that it does "not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption" and "influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that these officials are corrupt."
The implications of
Citizens United,
McCutcheon, and cases like it have been carried down from the federal level to state and municipal politics. In San Andreas, there is still no existing state campaign finance legislation or regulation. Instead, candidates are supposed to police themselves, a strategy which we have seen as difficult to achieve the desired result. One of the reasons why the likes of Olmos and Glassman were able to maintain such a comfortable level of freedom in their actions was that there is no state or municipal investigative body, law enforcement or civilian, tasked with investigating political ethics. Instead, it was a federal agency that eventually led to their demise.
In local and state politics, money plays an important role in campaigns for office. It gives candidates a voice and allows them to buy public opinion. Candidates fight vehemently for money, and in Los Santos they fight dirty. Before Jaime Olmos was mayor, he ran for city council on a ticket with former mayor Gary Keane and council member Demetrius Xavier. Olmos received support from Takumi Akuji, the CEO of Akuji industries, which at one time owned most of the property in the Little Tokyo district of Downtown Los Santos. Akuji hosted several fundraising events and made generous donations towards the campaigns of Olmos and Keane, who were both elected in the positions they sought. It was later discovered that Akuji was the head of a criminal syndicate and sentenced to life in federal prison for racketeering and murder.
No more relevant example for the importance of money in politics in San Andreas exists than that of Francis Maurer, the business tycoon whose Richman estate was the location where David Hanczuk was assassinated. Maurer, a Polish immigrant, is a self-made millionaire who made his fortune in the hospitality industry, beginning with the renowned Vinewood jazz bar and eatery, Frankie's. The bar received a five star review in the San Andreas Post in February 2012 and jump-started Maurer's career, which continued to grow as he bought property in Santa Maria, Vinewood, Commerce, and Rodeo, opening up restaurants and nightclubs, such as the Obsidian, which soon became Maurer's flagship operation.
Maurer was interviewed by the San Andreas Post in March 2012 about his take on local politics.
"There's no direct support from the government, though they do create opportunities for us. For me, at least. [...] [The government should] give us more opportunities," Maurer said when asked how the government should support his businesses.
Maurer stated that there was no mayoral candidate he would endorse because no candidate had fulfilled his expectations of how a potential mayor should benefit the business leaders of Los Santos.
It should not come as a surprise then, when in October 2013, a now well-established Maurer endorsed a candidate for the first time--his daughter, Alexis Maurer. Alexis Maurer, who had no experience in politics, had been the director of her father's charity, which made grants and interest-free angel investments in disenfranchised and unemployed citizens in need of employment or startup cash for a business idea. Although critics accused her of being a trust fund kid in the pocket of her father, Maurer ran an aggressive campaign around a variety of hot button issues such as crime and unemployment.
Maurer's campaign was viewed favorably by the media, especially the San Andreas Network, who ran stories in support of Maurer's achievements. This came only months after a fundraising event hosted by Maurer's restaurant raised over $250,000 to assist in buying new equipment for SAN and remodeling their news studio. In fact, it was the Los Santos Times, a publication owned by SAN, which ran a story stating that Maurer's sole opponent, Milli Sinclair, had been detained by deputies of the San Andreas Sheriff's Department during a drug investigation. It was this article which led to Sinclair dropping out of the race and Maurer's unopposed victory.
Maurer's tenure as mayor was mostly unimportant and is rarely mentioned when discussing the political history of Los Santos. No major legislation was passed, no lasting changes were made, and the impact on the citizens of the municipality were minimal. However, Maurer enacted several changes to programs affecting small, local businesses. The rules for obtaining licenses were relaxed, fees decreased, and the abundance of subsidies and grants went up. Businesses were offered financial incentives for maintaining a presence in various business improvement districts, including Vinewood and Rodeo, where Maurer's father owned most of his property.
Because of the use of holding companies and intermediaries, it is not able to be determined just what financial impact Francis Maurer's daughter's term as mayor had on his business interests. However, it was only just after her term ended that Maurer was rumored to have gone into business with David Gold, a Las Venturas casino developer, to construct the most expensive hotel and casino in the city's history: the Visage. How Maurer was able to obtain the capital to finance such a project will forever be unknown. The Visage, despite its highly anticipated opening and almost perfect reviews, was unable to sustain itself past a few months, and closed down in February 2014. Since then, Maurer has all but disappeared from the limelight.
The revolving door
Perhaps nowhere is the effect of the
Citizens United ruling more evident than in San Andreas. The ruling, combined with already lax laws governing the influence of money in politics, has given birth to an entire industry that operates at the nexus of business, politics, and the shadowy world of organized crime. Behind the prolific figures of the San Andreas political scene are an array of lobbying firms that wage battles on their behalf in the public and private arena. Fueled by substantial sums of money from the private sector and elements of the criminal underworld, these lobbyists have adopted aggressive tactics to further their clients' interests, engaging in everything from smear campaigns to outright bribery.
Politicians are unable to fight dirty on their own behalf at the risk of being viewed in a negative light, so lobbyists provide an invaluable middleman service as the link between the politician and fixers like David Hanczuk and power brokers like Otis Glassman. Ostensibly they act as public relations consultants, advising clients on the best way to argue their point or obtain a favorable ruling on a relevant issue, when in reality lobbyists are muscle--the strong arm of industry and the voice of special interests.
The concern with corruption, broadly conceived, has remained a dominant theme of American law and politics. Indeed, because of these concerns, lobbying itself was treated as illegal for much of the nation's history. This seems inconceivable in today's political culture, in which "K Street" lobbying dominates Washington's political and financial economies alike. But until the twentieth century, lobbying was considered contrary to public policy. Some states, such as Georgia, made it a crime. And even where lobbying was not a crime, courts refused to enforce contracts for lobbying on the ground that such conduct was contrary to public policy.
Today, fully half of all members of Congress become lobbyists upon leaving office. Most of them, of course, represent corporations. Far from a dirty word, lobbying today is seen as a First Amendment right; it's how we petition government, after all, and how we let our representatives know what we believe they should do as they represent us. We understand that lobbyists can engage in unethical behavior, but lobbying as such is seen as a necessary and often salutary part of representative democracy.
The challenge posed by lobbying is a microcosm of the larger problem that the free flow of money presents in a democracy. Representatives are supposed to be responsive to their constituents' desires, and must gain their constituents' support for election and reelection. Yet if an elected official takes money in exchange for a vote, responsiveness becomes corruption. The principle of one person, one vote reflects a deep commitment to equality. But citizens engage in political campaigns not only by voting—they debate with their friends and neighbors, write letters to the editor or Op-Eds, canvass for their favored candidates, donate money, and spend their own money to express their views on the issues of the day.
That's how representative democracy is supposed to work. But when individuals and corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money campaigning, and when society is marked by vast disparities in wealth, there is a real risk that democracy will become an oligarchy, as elected officials increasingly represent not all of us equally, but those of us who are willing and able to spend vast sums of money on their behalf.
Several lobbying firms dominate municipal and state political battlegrounds of our state. Firms like Griggs Dugan LLP, Orozco & Associates, Apex Strategy Group, Ernst & White, and Beacon Government Affairs, can be linked to almost every major politician, corporation, and interest group in the state. These elite consultants together take in over $75 million every year from various sources. Few candidates are elected without the backing of one of these influential kingmakers. Almost all political and corporate decisions will at some point pass the judgement of a specialist whose opinion is more powerful than a legislator's entire constituency.
In San Andreas, a state where the wealth gap almost triples the national disparity, a small group of independent and corporate actors has come to control the economic, social, and political realms. Political dynasties like the Hoovers and Maurers exist solely because they are the Rockefellers and Hearsts of our state. It is no longer a question of whether there exists corruption inside the political question, but rather how widespread it is and who will it eventually implicate. The battle for Los Santos mayor and other government seats is repeatedly won by public affairs and dirty tricks, not by ideology or innovation. When money equals speech and the loudest candidate is the one who wins, money is always more important than substance.