Also see: Dirty DiMasi
For more on this contemptible scum, type "DiMasi" into my blog search and see what comes up.
"DiMasi refuses to provide records; Ethics panel files motion to force his compliance" by Andrea Estes and Stephen Kurkjian, Globe Staff And Globe Correspondent | November 3, 2008
House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi is refusing to comply with a demand for records from the state Ethics Commission in its conflict-of-interest investigation, leading to a secretive legal showdown that has yet to be resolved, according to officials familiar with the matter.
As DiMasi was spurning the ethics panel, his personal accountant, Richard Vitale, unsuccessfully attempted to quash a state grand jury subpoena last week for e-mail records, according to another court official briefed on the matter.
The Ethics Commission is looking into multimillion-dollar state contracts awarded to a software company,
One of those friends was Vitale, who was given payments totaling $600,000 by the Cognos sales agent - in two lump sums after Cognos won state contracts. As he was working for Cognos, Vitale had extended DiMasi a highly unusual $250,000 revolving line of credit, secured by a third mortgage on DiMasi's North End condominium.
Do you get those kins of deals, citizens of Massachusetts?
The Globe previously reported that the Ethics Commission and state Attorney General Martha Coakley's grand jury are two of the five agencies looking into the money that some of DiMasi's friends and business associates received from groups with business interests on Beacon Hill. The FBI has also made initial inquiries, according to state and federal sources. And Secretary of State William F. Galvin has been investigating whether Vitale and two other friends of DiMasi's received lobbying fees without reporting them, as required by state law.
Inspector General Gregory Sullivan has been investigating the circumstances surrounding the awarding of two major Cognos contracts - a $4.5 million contract with the education department in 2006 and a $13 million technology contract with the state's Executive Office for Administration & Finance. The latter contract was revoked after a scathing inspector general report, and the money was returned to the state.
DiMasi has denied steering any contracts to Cognos, and said he didn't know his friends were receiving any payments. Though the contracts were awarded by executive agencies, they required special funding from the Legislature. Former Cognos employees and state officials have said that Joseph Lally, a former company vice president turned independent sales broker, bragged that he was friends with DiMasi and could have money added to the budget for the software.
Which means DiMasi is a LIAR!!!
Vitale and Lally were not the only ones who benefited from the Cognos deals. Steven J. Topazio, a criminal defense lawyer who shares office space with DiMasi, received a $5,000-a-month retainer from Cognos for two years. Topazio has not responded to requests for comments. And lobbyist Richard McDonough, a longtime DiMasi associate and Cognos's lobbyist, received $1.45 million from Cognos and Lally, $1.1 million of which he failed to report to state regulators, according to the Inspector General. McDonough has denied violating any lobbying laws. --more--"
The STENCH from the Massachusetts STATE HOUSE kind of gets to you, doesn't it, readers?
