FBI, IRS Raid Bronx Clinic of New York Sen. Pedro Espada (video)

by Sudha Krishna | April 21, 2010 at 09:23 am

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Soundview Healthcare Network Office Raided by FBI, IRS

The health clinic headed up New York state senate majority leader Sen. Pedro Espada has been raided by the FBI and the IRS. Democrat Pedro Espada is also the CEO of the Bronx based Soundview Healthcare Clinic

Some agents went into the clinic's offices. Others used bolt cutters to open an 8-foot-tall, 25-foot-long storage container behind the building and removed Espada campaign posters and other items. They also stacked boxes on the grass, and agents wearing blue or green gloves leafed through the contents and wrote notes.

One box was marked, "Payroll 205." Another said "Timesheets 205-206."

The raid is party of a possible criminal investigation and civil lawsuit filed by the state of New York into potential fraud with Attorney General Andrew Como accusing Pedro Espada of siphoning $14 million from the Soundview Healthcare Network.

Mr. Espada used the network as a “personal piggy bank,” the suit said, to pay for expenses over the last five years like $20,000 worth of takeout sushi and $50,000 to maintain a Bronx apartment where opponents have asserted that he does not live. He was also given a severance package now worth $9 million that would leave the clinics bankrupt if paid out, the suit said.

The Soundview Healthcare Network is a non-profit organizations that runs four clinics in the Bronx. The political future of Espada, the New York senate majority leader, is clearly in peril.

Pedro Esapada has is fighting back (see video), saying the Cuomo's investigation is motivated by naked ambition and that it is “simple political payback for what the establishment likes to call the Senate coup."