Maybe “money laundering” isn’t the right legal term for how Eliot Spitzer tried to hide his wire transfers to his escort agency. But the question the behavior raises — Should someone caught making an end run around banking laws be in charge of the city’s books? — remains at the heart of this race.
Scott Stringer has accused his rival for city comptroller of “money laundering,” which is a felony. Spitzer says the charge is false, and the US Attorney at the time said there was “insufficient evidence” to bring charges.
This much we know: When Client 9 was arranging for a hooker to come to his hotel room in Washington, he asked bank employees to leave his name off a $5,000 wire transfer.
The request so alarmed the bank that it filed a “Suspicious Activity Report” with the Treasury Department. That, in turn, prompted an IRS probe.
When pressed on the scandal, Spitzer’s m.o. has been to complain Stringer is being indecent by bringing it up. In fact, how Spitzer treated financial rules the last time he was in office is relevant to his fitness to oversee $140 billion in pension funds.
We’re not lawyers, but “money laundering” sounds like a reasonable, colloquial way to explain that Spitzer was trying to hide his fiscal fingerprints from authorities.
So we suggest Scott Stringer use Thursday night’s debate to ask Spitzer — who prides himself on his financial sophistication — this: If “money laundering” isn’t an accurate description for how you were trying to disguise those bank transfers to the Emperors Club VIP, what would you call it?