“The corruption trial of Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko circled back to Gov. Rod Blagojevich once again Tuesday with a new allegation about a $25,000 bribe being pried out of a once high-ranking administration official to keep contractors from slapping a lien on the governor’s Ravenswood Manor home,” the Tribune reports this morning.
Whoa!
Maybe he couldn’t come to a budget agreement with Patti so he just kept borrowing.
According to the Trib, the Blagos bought their 11-room bungalow in 1999 for $505,000. Having embarked on at least one remodeling project during the 2002 primary that drew controversy because they used non-union workers, the First Family went back to work after the election “this time hiring a Rezko-owned construction firm to do the work. It was yet another example of how the ties between Blagojevich and Rezko often crossed from the political to the personal. Patricia Blagojevich, a licensed real estate broker, has earned tens of thousands of dollars in commissions working with Rezmar, Rezko’s former development company.”
The Sun-Times reports that the Blagos paid the Rezko company, Chicago Construction Services, $17,768, as well as paying other contractors $79,922 “for work that included a new deck and family-room renovations.”
(A Blagojevich spokesperson says the couple “paid for the work to renovate their 14-by-20 family room out of their checking account.”)
How did it allegedly turn out?
“A former aide to Gov. Blagojevich has told prosecutors that, in 2003, he delivered a black plastic bag filled with $25,000 in cash to Tony Rezko to pay contractors and keep them from placing a lien on the governor’s Ravenswood Manor home,” the Sun-Times reports.
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Governor’s yard sale « fitzfabulous // May 20, 2008 at 3:34 am
[...] hawk. Now that he’s generally hated for doing *nothing* on the taxpayer’s dime except hand over jobs and $$$ to campaign contributors (allegedly), he’s nowhere to be seen. But the name stuck in my mind because they’re [...]