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After 14 months of waiting, Ridgefield mayor to face corruption charges in court
Published: Sunday, October 03, 2010, 7:31 AM Updated: Sunday, October 03, 2010, 7:31 AM
Joe Ryan/The Star-Ledger
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TYSON TRISH/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERRidgefield Mayor Anthony Suarez, charged in last July's massive corruption sting, will finally face trial.
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Share 1 Comments RIDGEFIELD — Of all the public officials caught in last year’s massive FBI sting, no one has clung to his job tighter than Anthony Suarez, the mayor of Ridgefield.
For more than a year, the 43-year-old Democrat has ignored a statewide chorus of calls to resign, despite raucous protests outside his home and pressure from then-Gov. Jon Corzine. Last month, the mayor narrowly survived a contentious recall election, clinging to office by just 29 votes.
But now, 14 months after being charged with taking bribes from an undercover informant posing as a crooked developer, Suarez will finally get what he’s been awaiting so adamantly: a chance to defend himself at trial.
"Anthony Suarez has maintained all along that he is innocent, and he eagerly anticipates the opportunity to prove it in open court," said his lawyer, Michael Critchley.
Opening arguments in the case are scheduled to begin Monday in federal court in Newark, marking the third trial to stem from the largest federal sting in New Jersey history. The money-laundering and bribery probe led to charges against 46 people, including five rabbis, three mayors and two state legislators.
Suarez is the last of those politicians still in office. Two others were convicted. Twenty defendants in the case have pleaded guilty.
They were all charged with help from Solomon Dwek, a one-time rabbinical student whose gift for schmooze and salesmanship made him the most prodigious informant ever to wear a wire in New Jersey. He began cooperating with the FBI in 2006 after being charged with a $50 million bank fraud.
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Dwek worked his way across the state, wearing a tiny hidden video camera on his belly as he tried to talk rabbis into laundering money and convince public officials to take bribes. It was in 2008 that Dwek came to the Bergen County borough of Ridgefield, a pint-sized town at the edge of the Meadowlands where homes are modest and local politics is brutal.
Suarez, a lawyer who grew up in Ridgefield, met Dwek through Vincent Tabbachino, a tax preparer from nearby Guttenberg. Suarez was embattled in a lawsuit with a political rival and had established a legal defense fund. Dwek, who posed as a developer hoping to build in Ridgefield, said he wanted to contribute. But in exchange, he wanted help securing permits from Suarez, who also sat on the Ridgefield planning board, authorities said.
"Make sure I got someone in there that, you know, can help me expedite, uh, you know, with my approvals," Dwek allegedly told Suarez at a restaurant in Fairview.
All told, authorities say the mayor took $10,000 from the informant. He and Tabbachino, who will be tried alongside Suarez, are charged with bribery, attempted extortion and extortion conspiracy. Tabbachino, 69, also is accused of helping Dwek launder $100,000, which the informant said came from selling knock-off designer handbags.
If convicted, Suarez and Tabbachino face up to 20 years in prison, according to Mark J. McCarren and Maureen Nakly, assistant U.S. attorneys.
The trial will hinge largely on Dwek’s testimony on the witnesses stand, where he will annotate the black-and-white videos he shot with a miniature camera. During past trials, he has been a combative witness who forcefully insisted his targets were guilty.
At a hearing last week, Critchley told U.S. District Judge Jose L. Linares that Dwek’s credibility was as dubious as snake oil. The 37-year-old admitted real estate swindler has acknowledged a string of misdeeds stretching back a decade: including mortgage fraud, tax evasion, paying off public officials and rigging auctions for his father’s nonprofit religious school. He even bribed his math teacher to graduate high school.
"I’ve never seen a witness in all my career … who has committed all the crimes he has," said Critchley, who has been a lawyer for nearly 40 years.
But during Dwek’s two previous appearances on the witnesses stand, prosecutors told jurors it was not his words that mattered. It was his videos. And those videos, prosecutors said, do not lie. In the end, of course, it will be 12 of Suarez’s peers who will decide truth from lie and, ultimately, whether the mayor can keep his job.
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