Alleged Gambino Linked Firm Dropped From Project

Alleged Gambino Linked Firm Dropped From Project

  May 20, 2010    Dapper_Don

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Image via CrunchBase

New York Dirt Contracting no longer will be involved with the construction of the Long Island Rail Tunnel from Queens to Grand Central Terminal in New York City "because the city's Business Integrity Commission has concluded that the company has been too cozy with organized crime figures and revoked its authority to do business in the five boroughs" as reported by William K. Rashbaum for The New York Times:

The decision was based in part on affidavits and wiretaps that detail a clandestine meeting in a nursing home between company officials and an influential mob figure, who boasted that he had helped them get a contract on another huge public works job in the city and arranged for them to dump debris from it in a Westchester cemetery. The company's owner denied wrongdoing. * * * The company and its owner, Edward Raffetto, fought the revocation of their authority to do business in New York City in court, noting that Mr. Raffetto had testified against the organized crime figure with whom he was accused of associating, Gregory DePalma, a Gambino crime family captain. And the prosecutor in that case wrote a letter to city regulators citing that cooperation. But the Business Integrity Commission decision, signed by the agency's chairman, Michael J. Mansfield, and the five other members of the panel, dismissed Mr. Raffetto's defense, saying he voluntarily sought out Mr. DePalma, asked him for help with his business and made cash payments to him, knowing of his role in the mob.