Joseph Bruno,faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines on each of the counts.

Joseph Bruno, one of the state's three most powerful officials for more than a dozen years, was indicted yesterday for allegedly taking $3 million in bogus consulting fees and other scams - including selling a "worthless" racehorse for $80,000 to a fat-cat friend. The upstate Republican's schemes to use his public position to enrich himself began even before he landed the Senate's top post on Thanksgiving Day 1994, and they eventually involved 16 labor unions and more than a dozen companies, the eight-count indictment alleged. The 79-year-old former boxer - who quit the Senate last year as the probe was drawing to a close - pleaded not guilty and declared he was the victim of a "politicized" probe and a "fishing expedition that smells really, really bad."
His indictment had been expected for months. It capped a three-year investigation that began with an FBI probe of flights Bruno took on private jets to Florida vacation spots and a Kentucky horse farm thanks to businessmen. The probe mushroomed into wide-ranging inquiry into Bruno's network of wealthy friends, business contacts and a suspicious consulting firm he ran out of his home. According to the 35-page indictment handed up in Albany, Bruno signed an agreement in March 1994 to steer business to Wright Investors' Service, a Milford, Conn.-based adviser to trade unions. The agreement allegedly said Wright would pay Bruno a fee for each union he got to hire the firm. Bruno contacted 16 union benefit funds, the indictment said. Eleven unions, ranging from Teamsters to corrections officers, agreed to let Wright manage their assets, according to the indictment. In return, Wright allegedly paid Bruno more than $1.3 million over 12 years.
But he allegedly concealed the money in a bogus consulting firm, Business Consultants Inc., and by getting Wright's parent company to hire him as a consultant. Bruno was also paid $632,000 over 11 years by an Albany banking and brokerage firm, McGinn, Smith & Co., which received fees for handling trades of union assets. He allegedly misled the firm by saying he cleared the work with the Legislative Ethics Committee. Bruno created Capital Business Consultants LLC to receive those fees, even though it "did not perform any function," the indictment said. In fact, Bruno never did any "legitimate work," it said. Bruno also received more than $1 million in gifts from three pals doing business with the state, the indictment said. He again hid the money as consulting fees and, in one 2005 case, sold a "virtually worthless" horse from his Mountain View Farm outside Troy to Albany-area millionaire Jared Abbruzzese. None of the companies, unions or other individuals cited in the indictment was accused of wrongdoing. "If Mr. Bruno engaged in illegal activities, Wright was not aware of them," the firm said. Bruno faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines on each of the counts.