Sometimes you need a score card to keep track of who is in trouble down here. The latest allegations are included in a just-unsealed sentencing memorandum for a city hall insider who wore an FBI wire.
By Gordon Russell
The New Orleans Times-Picayune
NEW ORLEANS — Since Mayor Marc Morial left City Hall in 2002, federal investigators have been combing through any number of the contracts and deals inked by his administration.
And not without fruit: The probes have led to guilty pleas from his uncle, several members of his inner circle and a top city administrator.
But the government’s heat never singed Morial directly until this week, with the unveiling of a court document that reveals that federal inmate and former mayoral pal Stan “Pampy” Barre told prosecutors that Morial accepted “cash payments.”
Morial’s name is mentioned in only one sentence in the four-page document. It does not say what the alleged payments were for, who made them, when they were made or how much Morial allegedly received.
Morial, now president of the National Urban League, has not been charged with a crime, and many legal observers think it’s unlikely that he will be.
His attorney, Pat Fanning, characterized Barre’s allegations as lies told by a desperate man who would say or do anything he could — even turn on a friend — to reduce his own criminal exposure. Barre began a five-year prison sentence last week.
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