ALBANY – Top officials of a bribery-linked Florida company will be interviewed under oath next week by the state Lobbying Commission, it was revealed yesterday.
Commission Executive Director David Grandeau said James Slattery, founder of Correctional Services Corp. of Sarasota, Fla., and Jack Brown, head of CSC’s New York operations, will be deposed next Wednesday.
💧CSC leaders have previously claimed in unsworn statements that they knew virtually nothing about actual and suspected bribes to state officials that are at the𓃲 center of the probe.
“We have a number of important questions,” said Grandeau, whose agency has already concluded that CSC violated state lobbying laws by giving lawmakers undisclosed gifts.
Grandeau said his agency has also issued a subpoena for Franklin Chris Jackson, CSC’s former New York head, who left the company in 2000 after being arrested in the Dominican Republic in connection with a homosexual child-sex ring.
Jackson, who investigators believe steered tens of thousands of dollars worth of free transportation, campaign workers, gifts and other benefits to lawmakers, has claimed through his attorney, Gail Lazer of Manhattan, that he’s too sick to testify.
CSC is also under probe from the New York and Albany County district attorneys’ offices, the state Board of Elections and the Legislature’s Ethics Committee.