Arthur Winn, founder of WinnCompanies and developer of the failed Columbus Center mega-development in Boston, has been charged with illegal campaign contributions aimed at obtaining elected officials’ support for his projects, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office and the FBI.
Winn and the company in which he was a partner were charged in federal court today with illegal campaign contributions and multiple violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act.
If convicted, Winn, 72, of Brookline, faces up to one year in prison, followed by a year of supervised release and a $100,000 fine on each count. Winn Columbus Center Limited Partnership has entered into a plea agreement in which, if accepted by the court, the company has agreed to pay more than $1.5 million in fines.
Another Winn executive, Martin Raffol, has already pleaded guilty to charges that he was directed to solicit campaign contributions to candidates selected by Winn himself. Raffol pleaded guilty to charges in connection with this conduct in September 2010. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 8. In particular, Raffol was asked to obtain campaign contributions from numerous vendors who did work for the company for candidates chosen by Winn.
In response to the increasing demand by Winn to solicit these contributions from company vendors, Raffol reimbursed some vendors for the campaign contributions solicited from them. These reimbursements came in payments for inflated or false invoices, including invoices billed to certain publicly-subsidized housing communities. The true source of these contributions was disguised from the FEC and state authorities, and, in some cases, circumvented the statutory prohibition on corporate contributions, according to court documents.
Collectively, there were more than $150,000 in reimbursed campaign contributions involved in these matters, including illegal contributions to the committees to elect Gov. Deval Patrick, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, and Congressmen Stephen Lynch and Barney Frank, among many others.
The charges against Winn allege that he solicited and made campaign contributions to a wide variety of candidates for elected office with the hope that these elected officials would generally support his companies’ development projects, including Columbus Center. Columbus Center was a mixed-use development that was to be built over the Massachusetts Turnpike and, at times, was designed to include a luxury hotel, condominiums, retail stores, and other amenities.
Additionally, U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz alleges that Winn reimbursed people for campaign contributions he requested they make to certain federal, state, and local candidates of his choosing. In so doing, the developer allegedly concealed the true source of those contributions from the Federal Election Commission and similar state authorities. In some cases, he allegedly avoided the statutory annual limits on the amounts that people could contribute to candidates for elected office.
"Using strawmen and conduits to conceal the true source of campaign funds erodes the public’s confidence in our electoral system," said Ortiz. "The conduct alleged today, which includes conduit contributions that were ultimately reimbursed using funds from publicly-subsidized housing communities, demonstrates the importance of open and honest campaign funding and record keeping."
