Two ranking officials and three others were busted by the feds yesterday in a growing probe into corruption at the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
The new wave of arrests marked the expansion of a probe by the FBI and Brooklyn federal prosecutors into alleged bribe-taking and payoffs at HPD.
Prosecutors have focused on allegations that city officials pocketed cash from real-estate developers and builders seeking lucrative city contracts.
Among those arrested yesterday was Michael Provenzano, HPD’s director of construction services, who pocketed a $10,000 bribe each year between 2004 and 2009, authorities claimed.
The bribes came from a contractor who wanted Provenzano to overlook the fact that workers were paid at levels below federal guidelines, officials said.
Luis Adorno, a former supervisory construction- project manager at the agency, was charged with acting as an intermediary to pass along a $100,000 bribe to help a contractor secure city contracts.
He would then allegedly receive an ownership interest in a real-estate development firm as a bribe payment, the feds charged.
FBI agents also arrested William Clarke, Panayiotis “Peter” Papanicolaou and Placido Rodriguez, described by authorities as contractors and real-estate developers.
All five of those charged were released on bond after appearing in Brooklyn federal court.