By William M. Reilly

Corruption has long been a fact of life in the U.S. state of New Jersey, perhaps stemming from the rough and tumble days of the docks along New York Harbor, but the arrests of 44 people following an apparent sting operation had even jaded area residents on Friday shaking their heads at its scope.

Those arrested in New Jersey and the neighboring state of New York were charged on Thursday for public corruption, an international money laundering conspiracy and human organ trafficking, officials said. More than 300 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents fanned out to make the arrests beginning at 6 a.m. local time.

The defendants include the mayors of Hoboken, Secaucus and Ridgefield, the Jersey City deputy mayor and council president, two state assemblymen, numerous other New Jersey public officials and political figures and five rabbis from New York and New Jersey. There were so many handcuffed defendants that they had to be taken by bus to be processed in court.

They ranged in age from 87-year-old Saul Kassin, a rabbi in Brooklyn, NY, to Peter Cammarano III, 32, the newly elected mayor of Hoboken, NJ.

"This investigation has once again identified a corrupt network of public officials who were all too willing to take cash in exchange for promised official action," said Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph J. Marra, Jr. in Newark, NJ on Thursday while announcing the arrests of the 44 people.

"Respected figures in positions of public and private trust engaged in conduct behind closed doors that belied the faces of honesty, integrity and rectitude they displayed daily to their respective constituencies," he said.

"The list of names and titles of those arrested today sounds like a roster for a community leaders meeting," said Weysan Dun, special agent in charge of the FBI in Newark. "Sadly, these prominent individuals were not in a meeting room but were in the FBI booking room."

He expressed the hope that the arrests could prompt significant change in the way business and politics are conducted in the state.

"BID RIG"

The most recent probe is the third phase of the federal government's "Bid Rig" investigations that began first in central Monmouth and Ocean counties of New Jersey. The initial investigation became public in 2002 with the guilty plea of Ocean Township mayor Terrence Weldon, who admitted extorting cash from developers to influence approval of projects, officials said.

The second "Bid Rig" phase resulted in the arrests in February 2005 of 11 sitting and former mayors and other elected officials in Monmouth County, the authorities said. The public officials allegedly took bribes from someone they believed was a contractor and money-launderer seeking municipal work but who was, in fact, an undercover cooperating witness.

In this third phase law enforcement personnel, with the assistance of a cooperating witness, first infiltrated a pre- existing money laundering network that operated internationally between Brooklyn, NY, Deal, N.J. and Israel and laundered at least tens of millions of U.S. dollars through charitable, non-profit entities controlled by rabbis in New York and New Jersey, officials said.

MONEY LAUNDERING PLUS HUMAN ORGANS TRAFFICKING

The cooperating witness told targets of the money laundering investigation he was involved in illegal businesses and bank frauds, the officials said in a press release accompanying announcement of the arrests.

The witness also openly discussed with targets that he was in bankruptcy and was attempting to conceal cash and assets, and told them he wanted to launder criminal proceeds in increments ranging from tens of thousands of U.S. dollars to 150,000 U.S. dollars or more at a time, often at the rate of several transactions per week.

According to the criminal complaints, money laundering operations run by the rabbis laundered a total of approximately 3 million U.S. dollars for the cooperating witness between about June 2007 and July 2009.

Officials said the investigation "veered onto its public corruption track" about a year ago when the cooperating witness represented himself to be a developer and owner of a tile business who wanted to build high-rises and other projects and get public contracts in Hudson County schools.

Through an intermediary, the cooperating witness was introduced to a Jersey City building inspector who, in return for 40,000 U.S. dollars in bribes, promised to "smooth the way for approvals" of the witness' building projects, the court papers said.

Then, introductions and referrals spread to "a web of public officials, council and mayoral candidates, their operatives and associates -- mostly in Hudson County and primarily in Jersey City -- who took bribes. In return, they pledged official assistance in getting the cooperating witness' projects prioritized and approved or to steer contracts to him," officials said.

In part, the bribe-taking was connected to fund-raising in heavily contested mayoral and city council campaigns in Jersey City and Hoboken, and the bribes were often parceled out to donors, who wrote checks in their names or businesses to the campaigns in amounts complying with legal limits on individual donations, they said.

Other bribe recipients took cash for direct personal use and benefit; others kept some of the cash and used the rest for political campaigns, according to the criminal complaints.

And also according to the complaints, Rosenbaum said he had been brokering the sale of kidneys for 10 years.

Officials said for conspiring to commit money laundering, the maximum statutory penalties are 20 years in prison and a maximum fine of 250,000 U.S. dollars; for conspiring to conduct an illegal money transmitting business, the maximum penalties are five years in prison and a maximum fine of 250,000 U.S. dollars; and for conspiring to transport human organs, the maximum penalties are five years in prison and a maximum fine of 250,000 U.S. dollars.

(Xinhua News Agency July 25, 2009)