ALBANY — Former Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno yesterday was found guilty on corruption charges for collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in private consulting fees from a businessman with interests before the state Senate.
The jury filed silently into the courtroom just before 4:20 p.m. and confirmed to the judge that it had found the 80-year-old Bruno — once one of the most powerful Republicans in the state — guilty on two of eight felo ny-fraud counts.
He was found not guilty on five counts, and no ver dict was reached on the re maining count despite seven grueling days of deliberations.
Both convictions stemmed from con sulting deals with Al bany-area business man Jared Abbruzzese.
Afterward, Bruno seemed stricken as he walked down the courthouse steps.
“It goes without saying that I’m very, very disap pointed,” he said.
He had main tained during daily press briefings that his outside activities were legal and properly vetted by Senate lawyers and ethics officials.
“The legal process is going to continue,” he added. “And in my mind, in my heart, it is not over till it’s over.”
One conviction involved Bruno’s $200,000 in consulting fees collected from two Abbruzzese companies after a third Abbruzzese firm got hundreds of thousands of dollars in state support.
The other conviction was for failing to disclose financial interests in a failed racehorse purchased in partnership with Abbruzzese.
During a bombastic appearance on the witness stand last month, Abbruzzese said he hired Bruno after the senator had complained about the outside income of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan).
Bruno will face up to 20 years in federal prison per count when he’s sentenced on March 31 by Northern District Judge Gary Sharpe.
But legal experts don’t expect the Korean War vet to have to serve much — if any — time behind bars.
Andrew Baxter, the US attorney for New York’s Northern District, said prosecutors “take no pleasure from what the trial revealed about the culture” of the state Senate under Bruno’s leadership.
But, he said, “we established that he exploited his office by concealing the nature and source of substantial payments that he received from parties that benefited from his official actions and the resulting conflicts of interest.”
Prosecutors had charged that Bruno wrongly collected $3.2 million in consulting fees from groups with business before the state.
But the jury rejected the most sweeping charge, involving Bruno’s decade-long relationship with Connecticut-based Wright Investors Services and an Albany brokerage firm — giving the former powerbroker some taste of victory amid defeat.
Bruno, the prosecutors claimed, introduced labor leaders to the two firms in exchange for $2 million in fees.