Broidy pleads guilty

Big story. Elliott Broidy, chairman of L.A.-based Markstone Capital Partners (see post below) and major Republican contributor, admitted to making payments to high ranking officials at the New York State Controller, His guilty plea in NY state court in Manhattan this morning is for "rewarding official misconduct." That's a felony charge. He has been a target of NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's probe of state pension fund corruption. From Bloomberg:

Broidy admitted to paying more than $130,000 between October 2003 and October 2005 to friends of the pension fund officials, who were overseen at the time by New York state Controller Alan Hevesi. Hevesi has not been charged.

Broidy also said he paid as much as $75,000 in travel expenses incurred by officials in the Controller's office in relation to trips to Israel and Italy. He said payments were concealed with the use of charitable organizations "and thereby caused false invoices to be submitted" to the Controller's office. ' He said he also gave $300,000 to help finance a movie called "Chooch," linked to a senior executive with the state pension fund. To conceal his involvement, he said, a third-party nominee wrote checks. Judge stone set sentencing for June 10.

Broidy faces four years in prison and will cooperate with Cuomo's probe.