New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and former high-ranking members of his administration won’t be criminally charged in a yearlong federal investigation into pay-to-play allegations involving one of the Democratic governor’s large political donors, a source familiar with the case said.
The decision not to pursue indictments was made by top Justice Department officials, said a person familiar with the investigation, who asked not to be identified because federal officials had not disclosed results of the probe.
“It’s over. There’s nothing. It was killed in Washington,” the person said.
A federal grand jury began an investigation last year into a possible pay-to-play scheme in which lucrative work on state bond deals went to a Richardson donor.
The federal probe derailed Richardson’s appointment as commerce secretary in US President Barack Obama’s administration.
Richardson and his staff traveled to Cuba this week for a trade mission. Richardson spokesman Gilbert Gallegos didn’t immediately respond to e-mail messages seeking confirmation that no charges were expected from the federal investigation.
A spokesman for the US Attorney’s office in Albuquerque said he had no information about the Justice Department’s decision and couldn’t comment.
Federal investigators reviewed whether contributions influenced the selection of California-based CDR Financial Products as an adviser on state transportation bond transactions, and whether Richardson’s former chief of staff, David Contarino, played a role in the hiring of CDR.
Prosecutors also subpoenaed records of another former Richardson aide, David Harris, and one of the governor’s close political advisers, Michael Stratton.
Harris served as Richardson’s deputy chief of staff and then became executive director of the New Mexico Finance Authority, which selected CDR for the bond financing work.
Stratton, a Denver-based political consultant, served as a senior adviser to Richardson’s last year’s presidential campaign and was a consultant to CDR and another financial firm when the Finance Authority put together the bond deals in 2004.
The state work generated almost US$1.5 million in fees for CDR in 2004 and 2005.
CDR chief executive David Rubin and his firm contributed US$110,000 to Richardson political committees between 2003 and 2005. The largest of those contributions, US$75,000, was made less than a week before CDR was selected in June 2004 by the Finance Authority to handle the reinvestment of idle bond proceeds.
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