ALBANY, N.Y. (AP/ 1010 WINS) -- Documents presented Friday at the corruption trial of the former New York Senate majority leader show he approached then-Gov. George Pataki and a state college on behalf of a technology company that employed him part time.
In letters between then-Sen. Joseph Bruno and Sage Alerting Systems officials, Bruno claimed he helped sell $1 million in computer equipment in 1993, some to Hudson Valley Community College in his political stronghold, Rensselaer County.
Bruno was paid $44,000 in commissions that year, and the sales threshold let him exercise stock options.
Accused of using his state influence to enrich himself by some $3.2 million over 13 years, depriving New Yorkers of his honest services, Bruno faces eight fraud counts. He was Senate Republican majority leader from 1995 until retiring last year. He repeated Friday that he was simply a businessman with his sideline consulting and did nothing wrong.
Other documents put in evidence showed that Bruno, under his Senate letterhead, proposed that Pataki meet in 1995 with an IBM representative for a possible school computer partnership. Bruno's employer sold IBM computers and requested he set up the meeting.
Prosecutors noted that Bruno's letter to Pataki omitted reference to the company employing Bruno, then called Ameridata Technologies.
Leonard Fassler, co-chairman of Sage and other offshoot technology companies that paid Bruno as a consultant for several years, said Ameridata was paying Bruno at that point. He said ``opening doors'' was one of the things they'd thought he could help them with, and at another point he sent him a list of top corporations like PepsiCo and Merrill Lynch they hoped he'd help them contact.
Fassler, testifying with a grant of immunity from prosecution for everything except perjury, said he found Bruno's advice and example as a leader worth the consulting fee of $4,000 a month. Bruno's payments from the Fassler companies amounted to $468,000 over 11 years.
The initial employment letter acknowledged limitations on Bruno's business activities because of his state position. ``We also recognize ethical considerations dictate that you should not represent us before any state agency or any other state-related business,'' it said.
Bruno also, at Fassler's request, called a 2005 meeting at his state office with Motorola and other companies jointly bidding for the contract to provide New York with a roughly $2 billion statewide wireless emergency communications network. Those companies included IBM and Vytek, another Fassler company that employed Bruno.
At issue was Motorola's information that the competing bidder M/A-COM, a division of Tyco Electronics, would be unable to fulfill the contract, Fassler said. Bruno listened, and while M/A-COM got the contract, it was canceled last year because of technical problems, he said.
Fassler acknowledged that Bruno didn't disclose to the companies that he was working for Vytek, though of course Fassler and Vytek knew. ``He didn't make any disclosures to the company on this list that I'm aware of,'' he said.
However, Fassler also said Bruno never told him not to disclose the business relationship. When another of Fassler's companies, Convergence Technologies Inc., got a state-backed $1.7 million investment in 2005 through then-Comptroller Alan Hevesi, that was the result of the venture capital company Fassler had approached, and Bruno got nothing. ``I told him you can't get any commission fees here because New York state has an interest, and he agreed.''
The week-old trial resumes Monday.
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