City Council investigating Kushner firms’ alleged false filings
Mayor de Blasio said Jared Kushner’s real estate firms may “have a problem on their hands” if they falsified records with the city Buildings Department.
“It’s not acceptable to lie when you’re filling out a form for the city government. So let’s be really clear here. If it proves to be true that they lied to evade regulation, they have a problem on their hands,” de Blasio said Monday.
But the City Council did more than talk — it launched its own investigation of how Kushner’s firms were able to file contradictory documents at the Finance Department and Buildings Department — one saying buildings they bought had rent-regulated tenants and another saying they didn’t.
“We are launching a joint investigation that will look into the prevalence of falsified building permits including but not limited to Kushner companies,” said Councilman Ritche Torres, head of the investigations committee.
City Hall said the architect for Kushner at the time, Jon Michael Conrad, had his self-certification privileges suspended in July 2016 and referred the matter to “law enforcement.”
Housing Rights Initiative president Aaron Carr cheered the Council’s intervention, saying the Buildings Department and the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal were “asleep” on the job.
It was Carr’s group that discovered that Kushner Companies had filed false documents with the Buildings Department by cross-checking tax records with the Finance Department.
De Blasio admitted there was some validity to the criticism.
“We have to do a better job of cross-checking our information too, and that’s something that we want to do,” the mayor said.
De Blasio said he realized that agencies don’t often share information when he first took office four years ago.
“We tried to break down some of that, some of those silos, some of that separation, but we’ve got a lot more to do. So I think it’s a valid concern and I want to see how we can get those two agencies to be coordinating. Because if someone violated the rules, we want to get them. it’s as clear as that,” he said.
Jared Kushner, is the son-in-law and top adviser to President Trump.
He no longer runs Kushner Cos. but was in charged during the 2013-2016 period when the paperwork for the buildings acquired were filed and he still has an ownership stake in some of the firm’s properties.