By Jill Colvin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MIDTOWN — Former State Comptroller Alan Hevesi has been sentenced to one to four years in prison for his involvement in a pension fund pay-to-play kickback scheme.
The sentence is the maximum available by law, the Attorney General's office announced Friday. The disgraced public official pleaded guilty in 2010 to felony charges for accepting nearly $1 million in gifts for funnelling $250 million of the state's public pension money to a particular private equity fund.
"Today, Alan Hevesi was appropriately punished for abusing his position as New York's Comptroller," Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement. "Hevesi brazenly sold access to New York Pension Fund investments — a betrayal of the public trust that went to the heart of his duties as Comptroller."
Hevesi's one-time top aid, Henry "Hank" Morris, 57, was sentenced to between 1 1/3 to four years in prison for his role in the scandal on Feb. 17.
Markstone Capital Partners founder, the beneficiary of the investment money, has agreed to return $18 million to the pension fund. Elliott Broidy, one of the founders of the group, also agreed to pay $18 million to the state as part of his plea, the Attorney General's office said.
Hevesi served as state comptroller from Jan. 2003 through Dec. 2006.
"I deeply regret my conduct and sincerely and deeply apologize to the people of the state of New York, the court and my family," Hevesi said during his plea in Manhattan Supreme Court in Oct. 2010.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who, as attorney general, spent years investigating and prosecuting the case, used the sentence as an opportunity to warn of the lasting harms of public scandal.
"Just as you cannot put a price on public integrity, you cannot quantify the harm done to the bond between the government and the People when public integrity is compromised," he said in a statement.
"It is a new day in Albany and the old way of doing business will not be tolerated," he said.
