There are “mountains of evidence” that a state legislator from Bronx took more than $20,000 in bribes to help Russian businessmen in their efforts to open adult daycare centers, a federal prosecutor told a jury Monday.
Democratic Assemblyman Eric Stevenson “betrayed his constituents. He violated his oath of office and he broke the law,” prosecutor Paul Krieger said in his closing statement to the jury in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
Stevenson, 47, even introduced legislation that would have created a moratorium on new adult daycare centers in the city, which would have doubled or tripled the value of the new business, Krieger said.
Stevenson’s defense attorney Muhammad Bashir countered in this closing statement that prosecutors failed to prove Stevenson took the bribes, and suggested that a government informant had pocketed the money.
Stevenson, a Democrat in his second term, faces up to 55 years in prison. He decided not to testify.
Judge Loretta Preska was scheduled to give the jury legal instructions in the afternoon before it began its deliberations.
