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: Bravo, Manolo.  Good Lookin' out. Who are you? would you please drop me a line? sglazer@urbantimesnews.com

: : Bond Banker Booth Gave Bribes, Former N.J. County Exec Testifies 

: : Posted on Thursday, June 05, 2003
: : Source: The Bond Buyer
: : By Martin Z. Braun 

: : Former Hudson County, N.J., Executive Robert Janiszewski testified last week that Jay Booth, a municipal bond banker well-known in county Democratic politics, handed him $6,000 in cash kickbacks after being selected to manage two bond deals for the county during the 1990s. 

: : Janiszewski also said Booth, currently a banker at Jersey City-based Red-Horse Securities LLC, gave him $3,000 on behalf of a vendor who had received an engineering contract. 

: : Janiszewski, the once-powerful Democratic Party powerbroker who struck a deal with prosecutors, gave the testimony last Friday at the corruption trial of Hudson County Freeholder Nidia Davila-Colon. She is facing charges of mail fraud and aiding extortion for allegedly funneling $10,000 in cash payments to Janiszewski from a vendor who received more than $2 million in county contracts. 

: : Hank Scheinkopf, a spokesman for Booth, called that allegation spurious. 

: : "Mr. Booth would never engage in such a practice, number one. Number two, Mr. Janiszewski and Booth were not political allies" and had a long-standing history of animosity, Scheinkopf said. 

: : "The firms that Mr. Booth was involved with did their business by complying with the law and with all appropriate regulations on the merits." 

: : Booth's conduct as a municipal securities broker has come under scrutiny before. 

: : Between 1988 and 1995, Booth was fined $60,000 by the National Association of Securities Dealers and censured for securities violations. In 1993, he was at the center of a state inquiry into political influence and the selection of underwriters in New Jersey. 

: : Although Scheinkopf said Booth and Janiszewski were political enemies for 15 years, Booth ran two small regional bond-underwriting firms in the late 1980s and early 1990s that did frequent business with the county. 

: : From 1988 through 1990, Jersey Capital Markets, which Booth operated, served as senior manager on three deals for the county and on the Hudson County Improvement Authority bond sale representing $40.1 million. The firm also served as co- manager on three deals for the same issuers valued at $283 million. 

: : After regulators forced him to close Jersey Capital Markets in 1992, Booth's new firm, Tri-State Capital Markets, served as senior manager on a $12.5 million Hudson County Improvement Authority deal and co-manager on $309 million in bond sales by the county and its improvement authority. 

: : While on the witness stand, Janiszewski said that in the early 1990s, Booth gave him an envelope containing $3,000 after Jersey Capital Markets was selected to serve as co-manager on a bond issue to finance the construction of the county's new jail. 

: : Janiszewski also testified that around 1999, Booth visited him in his office and handed over an envelope containing $3,000. The kickback came after Hudson County selected M.H. Meyerson & Co. -- the broker-dealer then employing Booth -- to serve as lead underwriter on a county deal. 

: : Scheinkopf said that Janiszewski, who controlled the board of the improvement authority, selected Booth's firm for authority bond issues despite their political animosity. 

: : "It was done on the merits," he said. 

: : On county deals, the freeholders -- the elected board of commissioners -- not Janiszewski, selected the underwriters, Scheinkopf said. 

: : "You don't have to go lobby the county executive to get these things done, necessarily," he said. Like Janiszewski, the county freeholders were all Democrats. 

: : Martin H. Meyerson, the recently retired chief executive officer of M.H. Meyerson & Co., refused to comment on Janiszewski's testimony. 

: : As the first witness in the Davila-Colon corruption trial, Janiszewski testified he received so many cash-filled envelopes from vendors and consultants that he had trouble hiding them all. The trial is the first to result from Janiszewski's undercover work for the FBI, who videotaped him accepting a cash bribe in an Atlantic City hotel in 2000. Janiszewski agreed to cooperate with authorities and secretly recorded conversations with public officials and contractors. He pleaded guilty to bribery charges last fall. 

: : Booth has not been subpoenaed by the U.S. attorney's office in the Davila-Colon case, Scheinkopf said. He also said securities regulators have not contacted Booth. 

: : Martha Mahan Haines, chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Office of Municipal Securities, was not in her office yesterday and could not return a call seeking comment. John Heine, an SEC spokesman, declined to comment. 

: : Earlier this year, New Jersey selected Red-Horse Securities to serve as co-manager on a $333 million issue by the state's Transportation Trust Fund Authority. The majority Native-American owned firmestablished in 2002, had never before underwritten a state bond deal. 

: : The brief resume of Booth provided by Red-Horse to the state treasurer's office called him "a recognized innovator and producer in the field of public finance in New York and New Jersey for the past 25 years." 

: : While the resume reported that Booth holds Series 7, 24, and 53 licenses, it did not report that he had been the subject of four regulatory actions by the NASD and one customer complaint. 

: : In 1988, the NASD fined and censured Booth and Jersey Capital Markets $30,000 for a series of violations, including numerous registration violations and failing to amend underwriting agreements disclosing that the firm had previously paid $20,000 to another broker. 

: : In 1992, the NASD fined Booth $25,000 and suspended him as a general securities representative for 180 days for allowing a disqualified broker to act as a registered representative, NASD records show. Later that year, the NASD censured Booth, fined him $2,500, and barred the defunct Jersey Capital Markets from reapplying for NASD membership. 

: : A year later, the president of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority told a legislative committee investigating bond deals during the administration of former Gov. Jim Florio that Booth's firm at the time, Tri-State Capital Markets, had been included in an exposition authority deal despite never having responded to a request for proposal. 

: : In testimony to a legislative committee, authority president Robert E. Mulcahy said then-governor's counsel M. Robert DeCotiis had chosen Tri-State without consulting the authority. 

: : According to Scheinkopf, DeCotiis' decision was not unusual. 

: : "All underwriters were appointed by the governor, as I'm told they are today," he said, adding that Booth earned a "colossal" $3,000 from the bond issue. 

: : 
: : : BOOTH CUTS A DEAL
: : : Steven Glazer email: sglazer@urbantimesnews.com

: : : Jersey City-Sources close to Mayor Glenn D. Cunningham said that Corporation Council Alex Booth has agreed to resign at the end of this month.  Booth and Cunningham have agreed on basic terms though not disclosed, freeing Booth to return to private practice where his earning power is far greater than as City Attorney.   

: : : Booth’s brother Jay was named in testimony by Bob Janiszewski in testimony during the corruption trial of Freeholder Nidia Davila Colon as one of the co-conspirators of Organized Crime, The Hudson County Democratic Organization.  Alex Booth’s resignation is not necessarily related to the incrimination of brother Jay.  Alex Booth was a key player in the opposition to the Cunningham administration by the Keystone Council, dominated by Bob Menendez, the head of Organized Crime.  

: : : Booth’s agreement to resign can only be seen as a retracement of the influence of the HCDO after the recent primary election dominated by Cunningham and his ticket. 


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