An application for American Rescue Plan Act funding is prompting an investigation by the Albany County District Attorney.
The Albany Times Union first reported that the county legislature was considering doling out $25,000 to a business that apparently had no ties to the region. The Global Organization for Sustainable Development Goals, the paper said, "does not appear to be registered with the IRS as a non-profit, and it is not listed in the online registry of the state attorney general’s Charities Bureau. On its application to the county for funding, it listed its physical address as the United Nations headquarters in New York City and a mailing address for a residential building on Western Avenue."
That mailing address belongs to 7th district Albany County Legislator Beroro Efekoro, a Democrat.
"Dahiru Biu, the person who applied for the grant, was somebody who was employed by my organization, the International Organization for Education," Ekeforo said. "But in 2017, we basically let him go because he could not produce a report that we had requested of him. And so after we let him go, he decided to start his own organization, which is the organization that applied for the funding with the county. And he's somebody that I've known personally. And a few years ago, he had an issue with his address. And he requested to use my property, one of my properties, as a mailing address for himself. And I let him use that address as his mailing address. So it is the mailing address that he used to get his personal mails and stuff."
Biu's application said his company had 40 employees who were paid $39,000 in its total budget.
Now, Albany County District Attorney David Soares has subpoenaed county consultant Capital Markets Advisors for information and documents pertaining to the grant award process.
The probe comes after a public battle between Soares, the county legislature and other countywide officials over a $23,000 bonus that the DA accepted and later returned under mounting pressure. Soares said it was a political attack.
Mark Grimm is a Republican legislator who represents the 28th district.
"So, let's see what he finds out. Of course, we want we want to know what they're investigating in this application as well. And let's see what he finds out. They're claiming it's politics. But the bottom line is, what is this fact finding mission? What would they find out? So we're very anxious to hear about that," said Grimm.
Soares declined to comment.
The legislature's finance committee held a special hearing Monday night to discuss the situation.
"This Capital Market Advisors, vendor, they just two weeks ago, there was a summary judgment by the SEC. I'm reading from the judgment, the court found that the defendants that's CMA breached the fiduciary duties owed to their municipal entity clients and violated municipal purity rulemaking board rules. So when I asked them about this last night, they said, well, it was basically, paperwork. But that's not the way I read it. So that's another complication. The court further held that CMA, and then their officers, violated Rule G17 by failing to deal fairly with their clients and engaging in a deceptive, dishonest or unfair practice,” Grimm said.
Republican legislator Paul Burgdorf of the 23rd district addressed his colleagues during Monday’s meeting.
"I believe that we as a county have had a corporate governance failure. We there failed to oversee the background vetting of potential grantees, we should have played a role in how those requirements were developed and whether or not they were sufficient. And then when we got documents, recommending who it was, it wasn't determined to this thing went to the floor. And there were 39 sets of eyes on the background documentation that showed this to be a sham," Burgdorf said.
The committee voted to table Capital Markets Advisors’ contract extension with the legislature for the time being, as the investigation proceeds. CMA did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Biu is currently jailed in Ohio stemming from a 2017 warrant unrelated to his company. Ekeforo says Biu "did nothing wrong by applying for the [ARPA] grant.
"I know the Times Union and some people have basically demonized him for applying for the grant. But he did absolutely nothing wrong by applying for the grant, because it was within his legal right to apply for any grant. It is the responsibility of the committee and the contractors who were hired to review these applications to see whether or not he met the criteria to apply for the grant," Ekeforo said.
