Senate Democratic leader John Sampson has been fingered by investigators as the leaker of confidential bidding information to the lobbyist for the politically connected firm that won the contract to run video slots at Aqueduct, sources told The Post.
Sampson last fall slipped a memo describing the bids to Carl Andrews, a former Brooklyn senator who became a lobbyist and represented the Aqueduct Entertainment Group, sources said.
The Senate staff memo — now in the hands of the state Inspector General’s Office, which is probing the entire matter — provided a summary of the proposals of rival bidders, insiders said.
It gave AEG valuable inside info allowing the consortium to revise its first bid in the second round. AEG was the only firm to revise the amount of its bid, going from lowest to highest in the projected amount of revenue it would raise through video lottery terminals at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens.
The billion-dollar contract was withdrawn from AEG after the inspector general’s investigation was launched.
An insider said Sampson, of Brooklyn, “didn’t think it was a big deal” because he thought “the process was open.”
But the inspector general has said in legal papers that the memo wasn’t public, and two other bidders told The Post they had not seen it.
Sampson spokesman Austin Shafran said Sampson testified to the Inspector General’s Office in the ongoing state probe.
He declined comment on whether Sampson leaked the confidential memo.
Sampson’s role in the Aqueduct scandal emerged as state probers concluded in bombshell court papers that the deal was rigged.
Special Deputy IG Philip Foglia, in a sworn affidavit, said: “AEG did alter its bid after the deadline for submissions and . . . AEG was in possession of information concerning the details of the submissions of other bidders and the evaluation process that was not available to these other bidders.”
In a separate court filing, the IG’s Office called AEG’s rise from low-ranked candidate in a Lottery Division analysis to eventual winner “meteoric and inexplicable.”
The court papers also mentioned the fact that Gov. Paterson met with a key AEG partner — influential Queens pastor and former Congressman Floyd Flake — just days after the governor announced AEG won the contract.
State probers suggested that Andrews may have violated ethics law by lobbying for AEG.