Dozens Arrested in New Jersey Corruption Probe

By SUZANNE SATALINE, AMIR EFRATI and CHAD BRAY

Federal agents swept into New Jersey towns across several counties Thursday morning, charging 44 people including mayors and religious leaders in a federal investigation into public corruption and money laundering.

The money-laundering portion of the investigation swept up several rabbis in New York and New Jersey, according to Ralph Marra Jr., acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey.

In all, 29 people were caught up in the probe into public corruption, and 15 were implicated in the investigation into money laundering, including one Brooklyn man charged with conspiring to broker the sale of a kidney. Those arrested were expected to be arraigned in court Thursday afternoon.

The case underscores "the pervasive nature of public corruption" in New Jersey, Mr. Marra said. Corruption among the politicians, he said, was "a way of life."

At the center of the two investigations was a single "cooperating witness" who directed by the investigators attempted to bribe officials and engage others in money laundering schemes.

A person familiar with the matter said the witness is an Orthodox Jewish real-estate developer named Solomon Dwek, a 36-year-old religious-school head and philanthropist from Ocean Township. In 2006, he was arrested and charged with defrauding PNC Bank out of $25 million. He was forced to seek bankruptcy protection for himself and his companies, which owned about 300 residential and commercial properties.

Mr. Dwek remained free on a $10 million bond. A lawyer for Mr. Dwek couldn't be reached for comment.

To ensnare most of the defendants, the FBI used Mr. Dwek to attempt to bribe public officials in New Jersey, including several in Hoboken and Jersey City, according to a person familiar with the matter. The probe roped in several other real-estate developers who also wanted to bribe officials.

Mr. Cammarano, a 32-year-old who became Hoboken mayor on July 1, allegedly agreed to take $10,000 in bribes from the cooperating witness in exchange for supporting the developer's future plans in Hoboken, the once-hardscrabble, now gentrified hometown of Frank Sinatra across the river from Manhattan. The alleged bribes occurred during Mr. Cammarano's mayoral campaign earlier this year, according to the FBI's complaint, which also charged an associate of Mr. Cammarano, who allegedly served as a middleman and took cash for him.

According to Mr. Marra, on May 19, before he was elected mayor of Hoboken, Mr. Cammarano said at a diner: "I could be indicted and still get 85% to 95% of the vote."

in counterfeit goods and concealing assets and monies in connection with bankruptcy proceedings.

In 2007, for example, Eliahu Ben Haim, the principal rabbi of Congregation Ohel Yaacob, a synagogue in the shore community of Deal, accepted a $50,000 check from the cooperating witness, which was drawn from an account held by a fictitious company set up by the FBI "for the purpose of enabling [the cooperating witness] to launder money represented to be the proceeds of illegal activities," according to one criminal complaint. Mr. Ben Haim was named as a co-conspirator in court documents. The check was made payable to one of Mr. Ben Haim's charitable organizations "with the expectation that the proceeds would be returned to the [cooperating witness] at a later date, minus a ten percent fee to be retained by Co-conspirator Ben Haim."

A woman who answered the phone at Ohel Yaacob Congregation in Deal said, "I don't have anything to say.''

The alleged money-laundering operations run by the rabbis laundered about $3 million for Mr. Dwek since June 2007, according to the court documents and a person familiar with the matter. The rabbis used charitable, nonprofit entities connected to their synagogues to "wash" money they understood came from criminal activity, prosecutors alleged.

"The rings were international in scope, connected to Deal, N.J., Brooklyn, N.Y., Israel and Switzerland," said Mr. Marra, the U.S. attorney, at the news conference. "They trafficked in the cleaning of dirty money all across the world."

Levy Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn was charged separately with conspiring to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant, at a cost of $160,000 to the transplant recipient. According to the FBI's complaint, Mr. Rosenbaum said he had been brokering the sale of kidneys for 10 years. Mr. Rosenbaum couldn't be reached for comment. A relative of Mr. Rosenbaum who answered the phone at an address belonging to him declined to comment.

Ed Kahrer, the supervising FBI agent on the case, said the probe began in July 1999. The investigations using Mr. Dwek began in mid-2007. A confidential informant, independently verified as Mr. Dwek, often wore a wire and was followed by FBI agents who videotaped his encounters with the probe's targets, federal prosecutors said in a statement.

Prosecutors said the bribe-taking by public officials was connected to their fund-raising efforts in heavily contested mayoral and city-council campaigns. The bribes were often parceled out to straw donors, who wrote checks in their names or businesses to the campaigns in amounts that complied with legal limits on individual donations, prosecutors alleged. Other bribe recipients took cash for direct personal use and benefit, prosecutors said. Some of the individuals who were charged with taking bribes from Mr. Dwek didn't win their elections.

New Jersey has been rife with political corruption for decades. Chris Christie, a Republican and former federal prosecutor, is campaigning for governor citing his long track record of winning convictions of public officials.

Gov. Jon Corzine, a Democrat who is running for re-election this year against Mr. Christie, issued a statement saying: "Any corruption is unacceptable – anywhere, anytime, by anybody. The scale of corruption we're seeing as this unfolds is simply outrageous and cannot be tolerated."

Mr. Corzine ran four years ago promising to quash corruption in the state. A package of proposed legislative fixes have been held up in the legislature and he has been subject to withering criticism by voters who say he failed to act on his promise.

Write to Suzanne Sataline at suzanne.sataline@wsj.com, Amir Efrati at amir.efrati@wsj.com and Chad Bray at chad.bray@dowjones.com

Organ trafficking and transplantation pose new challenges

The international trade in human organs is on the increase fuelled by growing demand as well as unscrupulous traffickers. The rising trend has prompted a serious reappraisal of current legislation, while WHO has called for more protection for the most vulnerable people who might be tempted to sell a kidney for as little as US$ 1000.

Increasing demand for donated organs, uncontrolled trafficking and the challenges of transplantation between closely-related species have prompted a serious re-evaluation of international guidelines and given new impetus to the role of WHO in gathering epidemiological data and setting basic normative standards.

There are no reliable data on organ trafficking — or indeed transplantation activity in general — but it is widely believed to be on the increase, with brokers reportedly charging between US$ 100 000 and US$ 200 000 to organize a transplant for wealthy patients. Donors — frequently impoverished and ill-educated — may receive as little as US$ 1000 for a kidney although the going price is more likely to be about US$ 5000.

A resolution adopted at this year’s World Health Assembly (WHA) voiced “concern at the growing insufficiency of available human material for transplantation to meet patient needs,” and urged Member States to “extend the use of living kidney donations when possible, in addition to donations from deceased donors.”

It also urged governments “to take measures to protect the poorest and most vulnerable groups from ‘transplant tourism’ and the sale of tissues and organs, including attention to the wider problem of international trafficking in human tissues and organs.”

Earlier this year, police broke up an international ring which arranged for Israelis to receive kidneys from poor Brazilians at a clinic in the South African port city of Durban. But such highprofile successes merely scratch at the surface.

Countries such as Brazil, India and Moldova — well-known sources of donors — have all banned buying and selling of organs. But this has come at the risk of driving the trade underground.

Behind the growth in trafficking lies the increasing demand for transplant organs.

In Europe alone, there are currently 120 000 patients on dialysis treatment and about 40 000 people waiting for a kidney, according to a report last year by the European Parliamentary Assembly.

It warned that the waiting list for a transplant, currently about three years, would increase to 10 years by 2010, and with it the death rate from the shortage of organs.

In Asia, South America and Africa, there is widespread resistance — for cultural and personal reasons as well as due to the high cost — to using cadaveric organs, or those from dead bodies.

The majority of transplanted organs come from live, often unrelated, donors. Even in the United States, the number of renal or kidney transplants from live donors exceeded those from deceased donors for the first time in 2001.

Yet the Guiding Principles on human organ transplantation, adopted by the WHA in 1991, state that organs should “be removed preferably from the bodies of deceased persons,” and that live donors should in general be genetically related to the recipient.

They also prohibit “giving and receiving money, as well as any other commercial dealing”.

This year’s WHA resolution therefore asked WHO Director-General Dr LEE Jong-wook to consider updating the guiding principles in the light of current practices.

“There is a real risk that standards devised in the 1990s with the emphasis on prohibition will be undermined and we have to react to this,” said Dr Nikola Biller-Andorno, ethicist at WHO’s Department of Ethics, Trade, Human Rights and Health Law. “What is needed is a critical and thorough analysis of the different proposals that have been made particularly with regard to expanding the use of living donors, by providing incentives and/or removing disincentives.” Dr Biller-Andorno said.

Dr Luc Noel, coordinator of the newly created Clinical Procedures team in WHO’s Department of Essential Health Technologies, said part of the review process included examination of how to minimize health risks to living donors after the donation.

“Removing disincentives is a must. Adding incentives is where things get difficult,” Noel said.

For instance, should a donor in a country with no health insurance be offered free coverage in case he or she gets a complication after the operation? And would this qualify as an incentive or removing a disincentive?

A WHO consultation on organ and tissue transplantation in Madrid last October, grouping 37 clinicians, social scientists, ethicists and government officials from 23 countries, reached no consensus on how and where to draw the line between removing disincentives and providing incentives.

The Madrid consultation unanimously agreed that there should be a WHO expert advisory panel both for allogeneic transplantation, involving organs from an organism of the same species, and xenogeneic transplantation, involving those from another species, and for global safety and quality principles for the regulation of organs and tissues.

Noel said there was a need for more epidemiological data and for more global transparency — especially with regard to the long-term health, psychological and socio-economic consequences for both living donors and recipients.

Clare Nullis-Kapp, Cape Town