The dramatic predawn raid on Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada’s health-care empire by state and federal investigators yesterday will likely result in his indictment on multiple federal charges in as soon as a month, law-enforcement sources told The Post.
The six-hour search of the senator’s Soundview Healthcare Network headquarters came as word emerged about another previously undisclosed probe into whether Espada evaded federal tax laws while profiting from more than $14 million siphoned from his Bronx nonprofit, the sources said.
“The problems for Espada are expanding,” one law-enforcement official said.
About a dozen investigators from the FBI, IRS and state Attorney General’s Office broke through the back door of the White Plains Road clinic sometime before 6 a.m. and pulled out more than 30 boxes of documents. The boxes included several crudely marked “payroll register” and “timesheets.”
Investigators used bolt cutters to break open two 8-foot-tall, 25-foot-long shipping containers being used as makeshift offices and stacked with “Vote Pedro Espada” campaign literature and boxes of files.
The search came less than a day after Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed a blockbuster civil suit against Espada and 19 other Soundview executives for looting the nonprofit for personal gain.
The Democratic attorney general — who is widely believed to be planning a run for governor this year — revealed for the first time yesterday that his office and federal prosecutors from New York’s Southern District had launched a joint criminal probe into Espada. Cuomo will oversee the civil suit.
Meanwhile, Cuomo said federal authorities had designated his special deputy chief of staff, former federal prosecutor Mitra Hormozi, to spearhead the criminal case.
“The Soundview clinic is a not-for-profit company that was receiving public funds, was receiving tax dollars, to provide health-care services for people who desperately needed it,” Cuomo told reporters. “This was not the private playground of Mr. Espada. These were public funds.”
Soundview received $8.2 million in Medicaid money last year.
Espada had denied wrongdoing and claimed the investigation is politically motivated.
“My family have jobs at Soundview Health Center and I’m very proud of that — that I’m able to give my family those opportunities,” Espada said at a news conference at his Bronx Senate office.
Sources said Cuomo’s lawsuit filed Tuesday in Manhattan state court had spurred a federal tax-evasion probe into whether Espada failed to claim as income much of his mind-boggling Soundview windfall.
Espada skipped the Senate session in Albany yesterday to mind his beleaguered Bronx empire.
Additional reporting by Sally Goldenberg and Carolyn Salazar