DeStefano Questioned In CEO Probe

Two FBI agents popped into Whalley Avenue’s START Bank — not to make a deposit, but to learn about how New Haven’s fair-hiring agency works.

The agents recently met with bank Vice-President John DeStefano as part of an investigation into alleged corruption — shakedowns, destruction of property, missing financial records — at the agency, the Commission on Equal Opportunities (CEO).

DeStefano served as New Haven’s mayor from 1994 through 2013. During that time Nichole Jefferson served as executive director of the CEO. An investigation into Jefferson’s tenure and her firing by DeStefano’s successor, Mayor Toni Harp, sparked the FBI probe.

DeStefano Friday confirmed the FBI visit. The FBI also visited City Hall this week to interview CEO interns, and invited Jefferson’s successor as CEO chief, Lil Snyder, to its own offices for a chat.

“They called me. We met at the bank,” DeStefano said. ​“We talked. They asked me about a number of matters.”

“Out of respect to the investigation,” DeStefano declined to detail the agents’ questions. ​“I will say generally most of their questions were about how did the CEO work — how did it work under ordinance, how it works under charter.”

Ongoing Controversy

The FBI paid its visit Wednesday to the sixth-floor City Hall office of the CEO, which monitors hiring of blacks and Latinos and women on government-funded construction projects. It invited the current CEO chief Snyder to its offices a day earlier. Snyder became the agency’s director earlier this year after the Harp administration placed on leave, then fired, previous director Jefferson.

Jefferson’s removal has sparked heated controversy (including a July showdown at a CEO board meeting, shown in the above video). The Harp administration hired its own investigator who produced a report accusing Jefferson of ​“corruption” in office, including shaking down contractors whose work she oversaw to contribute money to, or hire apprentices from, a separate not-for-profit agency she ran, the Construction Workforce Initiative 2 (CWI2), a now-shuttered training-school on Dixwell Avenue; and refusing to provide documents pertinent to the agency’s finances and decision-making under her watch. Based on that report, Mayor Toni Harp fired Jefferson on Aug. 6. (Read all about that in this story.)

Jefferson denied all the accusations. She accused administration officials of conducting a politically motivated ​“witch hunt” against her. Her union, AFSCME Local 3144, has filed a grievance over the firing; a state labor panel is scheduled to hold a hearing on the wrongful-termination complaint in November.

Meanwhile, the FBI has been looking into criminal allegations lodged by both sides — at least some of them beyond the scope of what appeared in the Harp administration report. A grand jury has convened in the case, according to this article by the New Haven Register’s Mary O’Leary.

It was already known back in March, when Jefferson was first placed on leave, that a city-hired lawyer had been meeting with the U.S. Attorney’s Office about the matter.

Then this week the FBI notified Deputy Corporation Counsel Christopher Neary that it planned to visit the CEO office at City Hall to ask people questions. Neary said Thursday that the agency did not detail the scope of the questions and did not issue subpoenas.

In an interview in her office Thursday afternoon, Snyder said that the FBI spoke with interns in her office about her decision to shred some old CEO documents in July the day she moved the agency office from the 200 Orange St. government office building next door to City Hall. That day, Jefferson and Local 3144 President Cherlyn Poindexter accused Snyder of seeking to destroy documents that would support Jefferson’s case, and of illegally destroying government records. The union has taken its complaint to the state Freedom of Information Commission. Snyder said then — and repeated Thursday — that she had received state permission to destroy the records as part of a normal process of clearing out expired, outdated ​“non-official” documents. She said the records dated back to between 2000 and 2003 and included ​“old lists of contractors, people who had come from the training program, policy manuals, state prevailing wage” records. (Poindexter said Thursday she was unaware of the FBI’s visit this week.)

Meanwhile, Snyder said she had visited the FBI’s office on Tuesday to answer questions about the agency. She said agents asked her about possible destruction of property before she came on board. She said she was asked if she could locate minutes of CEO board meetings at which major decisions were made under Jefferson’s stewardship; Snyder said she couldn’t; the Harp administration has charged that either those legally required records were never kept or else Jefferson won’t provide them, an allegation Jefferson denies.

Also, the city has accused Jefferson and her supporters of destroying a CEO-affiliated quasi-public training center on Dixwell Avenue, stripping it and even clogging drains with cement after she was relieved of her duties. Jefferson told the Independent at the time that she was merely removing furniture and other items that belonged to her and the agency, not to the city. She accused the city of perhaps subsequently trashing the building to make her look bad; the city said only she had the keys to the facility during the time of its trashing.

Click here for a story detailing the city’s allegations along with Jefferson’s side of the story; click on the above video to watch Jefferson give her side as her crew filled U‑Haul trucks with the contents of the building the night she was placed on leave.

Contractor Contacted, Too

Also this week an FBI agent made contact with a contractor named Artner Banton, who previously provided the city with a sworn statement accusing Jefferson of a shakedown. Banton told the Independent that he and the agent arranged to speak next week.

Banton runs a company called Lab Restoration & Construction. He charged in an affidavit released in August by the city that after the CEO fined him in 2004 for failing to hire women, he had a meeting in Jefferson’s office. “[S]he locked the door behind her and I sat down. Ms. Jefferson told me I was not in compliance at the job cite [sic] during the one day site check and that the project would be shut down for noncompliance. Ms. Jefferson then proceeded to tell me that if I gave her $15,000.00 I would ​‘never have any problems’ with working on City of New Haven construction projects going forward. … I understood that Ms. Jefferson was seeking a bribe and extorting me and my company.” He stated he never paid the money, and did not subsequently get fined — but did find it ​“impossible … to secure contract work with the City of New Haven.”

Jefferson denied the accusations. She said the alleged meeting never took place.

“He hires people and doesn’t pay them,” Jefferson said in an interview this summer with the Independent. She said at the time of the dispute, Banton had failed to pay a $678 fine: ​“He can’t pay a $678 fine — but I’m going to take him into a room” and seek $15,000?”

She produced a letter that politically connected Rev. Bosie Kimber had written on Banton’s behalf to city officials seeking to have the penalty erased, as well as a print-out of this 2005 New Haven Independent article about Banton failing to pay employees. Poindexter added that the alleged incident occurred 11 years ago and is ​“moot” now.

Previous coverage of this story:
• Harp Fires Fair-Housing Chief For ​“Corruption”
• Items Removed From Agency Under Investigation
• Who Poured Cement In The Drains?
• CEO Chief Reveals, Rebuts Accusations
• This Loo Was Left Behind — With Cement