Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - A lawsuit has been dropped which accused Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown's administration and the mayor himself of misusing federal funds and giving preferential treatment to favored developers.
It was all explained in a sealed document that has just recently been made available to the public. Former NYS Attorney General Dennis Vacco, an attorney with Lippes Mathias, appeared on WBEN Tuesday morning and summarized the complicated details that led to the dismissal, including a raid on City Hall.
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"In 2019, there was a raid, ostensibly, there were search warrants that were issued that authorized the raid of offices and City Hall. And then sometime after the raid occurred, a former city employee, somebody who worked at the Bureau, filed a False Claims Act lawsuit. They're two separate independent government actions, the raid was focused on potential criminal prosecution. And then the civil lawsuit that the private citizen, former city official, filed was an action to recover damages, alleged monies lost as taxpayer monies lost."
Vacco further explains the False Claims Act and the sealed document.
"The False Claims Act gives a private citizen the right to bring an action on behalf of the government. There's an incentive in that the individual who brings a False Claims Act lawsuit, if successful, gets a piece of the action, so to speak, that they are rewarded with a percentage of the recovery. So what what the government did here most recently, is after three plus years, almost four years of that false claims act being under seal, the seal was lifted. The government decided that the United States government, through the Department of Justice, was not going to adopt the civil lawsuit."
Vacco explains that although the United States Attorney's Office has not announced that the investigation is over or reported any findings in response to the search warrant, the office deemed that the allegations in the civil lawsuit were not substantial enough for the U.S. Government to adapt the case.
Why was the document under seal for so long?
"Under the law, under the Federal False Claims Act statute, it's mandatory that it be sealed for six months to allow the Department of Justice to review the allegations in the complaint. The Department of Justice can ask the presiding judge to extend that ceiling order for a period of time. And in this instance, they they asked for the ceiling order to be extended for almost three years. So there's nothing nefarious, there's nothing untoward about the fact that it was sealed for so long."
Nona Watson, the one who sounded the alarm of the alleged corruption and the former executive director of the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency, voluntarily dismissed her claim on March 21st.
Mayor Byron Brown responded to the dismissed allegations following his State of the City address Monday. "Ms. Watson's civil case was voluntarily dismissed. You know, that says all you need to know about that issue."