Indicted New York City Politician Andrew Stein Was Behind Controversial License For Gay Bar

In New York City the feds have charged Kenneth Starr, a financial advisor to the stars, with fraud and money laundering in connection with an alleged $30 million Ponzi scheme, and Andrew Stein, a former City Council and Manhattan borough president, with lying to the I.R.S. as reported by Alison Gendar and Bill Hutchinson for the Daily News:

Prosecutors charged that Starr pilfered millions from actors, philanthropists and an elderly heiress. Star is accused of touting “sure deals” to his clients, while making investments in risky companies, some co-owned by wife Diane Passage, a former Scores stripper. * * * The complaint charges that Starr teamed up in 2000 with Stein, who was a consultant for various investment companies. Starr is accused of funneling $1.6 million into a company called Wind River that Stein then drained for personal expenses, including a Hamptons summer rental. Stein is charged with lying to the IRS and federal agents about his involvement with Wind River.

A political tempest about a restaurant in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan has swept up Borough President Andrew Stein . . . .  The community board and a solid array of elected officials from the area did not want a restaurant called Uncle Charlie’s South, at Third Avenue and 38th Street, to get a limited cabaret license. They felt it would make it a noisy discotheque unsuited to a residential district. The storm broke when Mr. Stein, three days after strongly opposing the cabaret variance as “abhorrent,” went into a complete reversal the day before a hearing on Jan. 31 before the Board of Standards and Appeals. He urged that the variance be granted for a one-year trial period. It was. * * * Mr. Stein could not be reached yesterday to explain his total change of attitude in three days. But his depty borough president, Chris McGrath, said that Mr. Stein, after writing his letter of strong opposition, had made a personal inspection of the area and had decided it should have a one-year trial period. * * * The bitterness of the disagreement has touched off ugly insinuations. Mr. Stein’s critics say he made his quick reverse at the suggestion of his father, Jerry Finkelstein, one of the most powerful political power brokers in the state. * * * The Board of Standards and Appeals, in granting the variance last Tuesday, said it was doing so “on the grounds of practical difficulty and/or unnecessary hardship.” The restaurant, in its request for dancing, had pointed out that last year, after dancing was halted there, business fell of sharply. It said that unless it could have dancing again, it would face bankruptcy. * * * The building, Mr. [Solomon] Sheer wrote, “is part of the Goldman & DiLorenzo real-estate empire, which is also under financial pressure.”

Goldman and DiLorenzo own real estate in New York worth more than $850 million; they own 355 properties in Manhattan alone, including a dozen pornographic bookstores, movie theatres, and massage parlors, plus several luxury buildings populated by pimps, pushers and prostitutes.  * * *  In addition, it is widely rumored that Goldman and DiLorenzo have connections with the Mafia.  They once hired a “labor consulting” company named SGS Associates, owned by Carlo Gambino, to break a strike by employees of the Chrysler Building.