After a nine-day trial former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (D) was found guilty of corruption and accepting bribes while in office.
Prosecutors claimed Nagin received more than $500,000 in under the table dealings during his two-terms in office. Payoffs included trips to Hawaii and Manhattan.
Nagin was declared guilty in 20 of the 21-count indictment. Each charge carries between 3 to 20 years in prison.
As reported by the Associated Press:
Prosecutors say he took hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of bribes including money, free travel and granite for Stone Age LLC, a family granite business.
They allege the corruption spanned the time before and after Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005.
The charges resulted from a City Hall corruption investigation that had resulted in several convictions or guilty pleas by former Nagin associates by the time trial started on Jan. 27.
Fradella and Williams, both awaiting sentencing for their roles in separate bribery schemes alleged in the case, each testified that they bribed Nagin.
Nagin's former technology chief, Greg Meffert, who also is awaiting sentencing after a plea deal, told jurors he helped another businessman, Mark St. Pierre, bribe Nagin with lavish vacation trips. St. Pierre did not testify. He was convicted in the case in 2011.
Nagin said he did not to know his vacation trips to Jamaica and Hawaii were paid for by St. Pierre. He also said he wasn't told that a family trip to New York was paid for by a movie theater owner who, prosecutors said, received help with a city tax issue after Katrina wiped out the theater.
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The former mayor is currently under house arrest, no sentencing date was set.
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