It might be the most-scandal plagued project of his administration, but Mayor Bloomberg today pronounced the $722 million CityTime timekeeping project a great success.
“We actually did a pretty good job here, in retrospect,” the mayor said on his weekly WOR radio show.
Bloomberg argued that mega-software projects are fraught with technical peril and noted that some never get done.
“The FAA hasn’t been able to get their new traffic control system and the IRS — at the federal level some of these programs go on for decades, cost billions and billions of dollars and never come up with anything,” he said.
Federal prosecutors have charged a half dozen people, including CityTime subcontractors, with ripping off $80 million from the project over several years.
Within hours of Bloomberg’s comments, the feds unsealed an indictment against Gerard Denault, a former executive of Science Applications International Corporation, with receiving at least $5 million in illegal kickbacks in connection with CityTime, according to the criminal complaint.
Denault was also charged with wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. He was arrested in Danbury, Conn., on Thursday.
DOI Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn said Denault “sold his influence on the CityTime project, skimming millions for himself and leaving taxpayers to foot the bill, according to the charges.
“As the prime contractor’s representative on a worthwhile project intended to eliminate a paper timekeeping system, this defendant instead engineered a lucrative kickback scheme to benefit himself, hiking up the cost to the city.”
Denault’s lawyer, Barry Bohrer said his client “is confident that a jury will find him not guilty of these charges.”
In his comments this morning, Bloomberg conceded the city wasn’t as vigilant as it should have been.
“The one thing here there’s no no excuse for is we didn’t catch fraud, which we should have,” he said. “But having said that the project is done, it is working, it will stop fraud and it will be efficient.”