New York Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin, the son of a Guyanese immigrant, has been arrested and charged with bribery and fraud for allegedly directing state funds to a group controlled by a real estate developer who was a campaign donor, U.S. prosecutors said last Tuesday.
Reuters reported that Benjamin, a Democrat appointed as the state’s No. 2 official by Governor Kathy Hochul last August, directed a US$50,000 state grant to the organization while serving as a state senator in 2019, according to an indictment unsealed on Tuesday.
The developer then sent Benjamin’s campaign for state Senate thousands of dollars through several cheques in the names of the developer’s relatives and a limited liability company, according to the indictment, which did not identify either the developer or the organization that the developer controlled, Reuters reported.
Benjamin surrendered to authorities on Tuesday morning, according to a spokesman for the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office. He faces five charges including bribery, wire fraud and falsification of records.
When Benjamin took office as Lieutenant Governor in September last year, he reputedly became the first Caribbean-American statewide office holder in New York’s history. On his website brianbenjamin.org, he said that his mother is a Guyanese immigrant who arrived in New York with “just a suitcase and a dream and worked hard to get a decent union job”. His stepfather is a Jamaican immigrant who was Brian’s bus driver when he was a child. The website said that they raised Benjamin in New York City, and, together, they were able to send their son to Brown University and Harvard Business School.
“Because of stories like his own, Brian has always believed that New York is a place where anybody can come and achieve their dreams, and he’s fighting to keep it that way for generations to come”, the website stated.