New York labor leader Dennis Rivera funneled $1.1 million of his nonprofit’s money to a “sham” charity tied to former presidential candidate and then-New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, The Post has learned.
“We don’t know where they spent it,” said Victor Marshall, the New Mexico lawyer for a former state worker in a whistleblower lawsuit that raises the issue of the mystery cash.
The Post learned that the money slithered through two nonprofits controlled by Rivera — former president of SEIU Local 1199, the giant health-care workers union — until it ended up in
Richardson’s Moving America Forward Foundation, based in Albuquerque.
The money trail begins in DC in 2004, when $20 million landed in the coffers of America’s Families United (AFU), a “voter protection” group run by Rivera. It was formed a year earlier.
The money came from an anonymous donor, said Colin Greer, a former Brooklyn College professor who was a board member at the time.
AFU parceled out the funds in the 2004 presidential election year to groups nationwide, including a $1 million grant to another Rivera nonprofit, the Hispanic Education and Legal Fund, based at 1199’s offices in Midtown.
The HELF, in turn, wrote a $1.1 million check to Richardson’s foundation.
The grant to the foundation — the biggest in the HELF’s history — seemed like an odd choice for the fund. But Richardson had a key tie: He, Rivera and lobbyist Tonio Burgos had founded the HELF in 1994.
Richardson had two big campaigns coming. In 2005, he’d begin his re-election bid, and in 2006, he’d inform Democratic Party leaders of his interest in running for president in 2008.
His foundation was supposed to be for voter registration, and its funds could not be legally used for political campaigning.
Ken Boehm, chair of the watchdog National Legal and Policy Center, said the money raises questions.
“Why was the union-affiliated nonprofit funneling more than a million dollars to a Richardson group which is now alleged by New Mexico in a fraud lawsuit to have been used as a vehicle for
kickbacks?” said Boehm, whose group is looking into the donation.
The foundation’s fattening coffers would set off alarm bells as a pay-to-play scandal erupted around Richardson’s administration.
The governor started a political action committee, Moving America Forward, in 2003, and “it spawned a secretive foundation of the same name,” the Albuquerque Journal reported.
The Moving America Forward Foundation was incorporated by three Richardson associates, including adviser Anthony Correra, now a defendant in the whistleblower suit.
“MAFF was a sham; its main purposes were to serve as a vehicle for kickbacks to Richardson or Richardson’s campaigns,” court papers say.
The state put more than $90 million into bad investments in companies that were expected to kick money back to Richardson’s associates, court papers say.
Richardson was never indicted, but the scandal derailed his appointment as commerce secretary in President Obama’s first term.
Attention turned to his foundation and PAC. Press inquiries into the foundation’s donors were met with silence or claims of ignorance from board members who said they didn’t know about or had
little involvement with the group.
Amanda Cooper, a consultant to the foundation and a Richardson campaign manager, told The Post that the group registered 160,000 Hispanic and Native American voters.
A Richardson spokeswoman said he did not solicit money from Rivera.
She said he teamed with Rivera to form the HELF because he saw Rivera as “the best Hispanic organizer and voter-registration specialist in the country. [The] governor wanted to be helpful and
lent his name but was not very active with the nonprofit.”
Rivera, who stepped down as 1199’s president in 2007, refused to shed any light on the cash transfers.
He said the HELF was set up “to enhance the power and effort of the Latino community . . . We’re seeing the results right now.”
Asked to elaborate, he said, “And I don’t care. And I don’t care. And I don’t care.”