Questions linger a year after FBI arrests two mayors

It came and went without much fanfare — the first anniversary of the arrests of both Miami Lakes Mayor Michael “Muscles” Pizzi and Sweetwater Mayor Manny “Maraña” Maroño in separate snags on the same August day last year and in the same FBI sting — bogus economic development grant approvals for kickbacks.

Maroño is serving his three and a half year sentence on federal bribery charges and Pizzi is in the midst of a trial that looks like, lucky him, it could go either way.

Both Richard Candia and Jorge Forte, the lobbyists who connected the undercover agents with Pizzi and Maroño, respectively, have been tried and convicted. Forte was sentenced to a year in prison and three on probation. Plus he has to repay the $30,000 he pocketed from the scheme. Candia, who has become a star witness in the Pizzi trial, will likely be sentenced to similar time.

But — and here we start with question No 1: Where is Michael Kesti, the lobbyist and one-time confidential government informant (oops, did I say that?) who really put everybody together?

Kesti has not come out to testify in either trial and he seems to have escaped any kind of scrutiny — all with a handsome fee of $114,000 and the use of a Lexus for his role in this made up sting, which was basically ensnaring these people in some bizarre and byzantine con job on the U.S. government.

Question No. 2: Why does any agency, federal or local, have to invent brand new graft and fraud when all they have to do is attend a Miami-Dade County Commission meeting to see the shenanigans unfold all by themselves first hand?

Really. Just get yourselves to the Stephen P. Clark Center and go to a meeting or just hang out on the 29th floor. You can’t get the whole idea watching the commission meetings on the county cable TV channel. You don’t get to see the audience well. You can’t see the interaction between commissioners and their staff with lobbyists milling about the dais or nodding to them from the third row. Ladra even once saw a thumbs up.

Question No. 3: And why did they cut this sting and investigation short so quickly when all us local political observers just know that they could have caught themselves some other, perhaps bigger fish if they had just tried a little harder?

Kesti with Bateman(1) — Kesti stands with Bateman and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis at a job creation event in 2012.

Especially since Kesti seemed to be close to another tainted elected, Mayor Steve Bateman, who was arrested in the same month last year on completely different public corruption charges of unlawful compensation for using his elected position to secretly lobby.

Bateman’s also had moths shaken from his closet, like Maroño, when seven more campaign finance charges were made against him.

So maybe authorities already have enough on him. But what about the others. Did they miss an opportunity to get Hialeah Mayor Carlos “Castro” Hernandez or anybody else for that matter?

Question No. 4: Could this be a distraction to keep our corruption noses busy while something else happens right under them that is bigger and more egregious?

Ladra knows she sounds a little paranoid. But have you heard this almost preposterous story?

To summarize: FBI agents spend close to two years in an investigation, a sting they set up, to snare two mayors who everybody in the 305 knows have been up to no good on their own — heck, Maroño’s dirty laundry has since stacked up like Girl Scout cookie boxes in March. Recorded conversations catch the men talking about kickbacks for their help greasing the wheels of grants that were never intended to go to the city or the taxpayers’ benefit. They also may have recorded one mayor boasting about his sexual prowess with a city employee, according to several sources. There were cash-stuffed envelopes left between newspaper pages or in the men’s room of a local pool hall. One bagman gave one mayor $3,000 in an office closet.

You cannot write fiction better than this.

Question Nos. 5 and 6: Who are the feds investigating next? And do they just pick names out of a hat?

Question No. 7: Maybe we could slip them our own nominees? You know, like a community corruption suggestion box.

lobbyists, Manny Marono, Michael Kesti, Michael Pizzi

Questions linger a year after FBI arrests two mayors added by Ladra on August 11, 2014
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