By Joe Valiquette
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Disgraced former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik was sentenced to four years in prison on Thursday after pleading guilty to felony charges of tax fraud and lying to the White House.
Kerik will surrender May 17, the U.S. Attorney's office said.
"It is a very sad day when the former Commissioner of the greatest police department in the world is sentenced to prison for base criminal conduct," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement. "No one in this country is above the law."
The federal charges include tax fraud, filing false tax returns, making a false statement on a loan application, and five counts of making false statements to the federal government, prosecutors said.
"I make no excuses," Kerik said during Thursday's sentencing, according to media reports.
By pleading guilty last November, Kerik admitted receiving approximately $255,000 in renovations to his Riverdale apartment in 1999 and 2000 from Interstate Industrial Corporation, a New Jersey based construction company with alleged mafia ties, prosecutors said.
He also admitted contacting New York City regulators to vouch for the company regarding business it was pursuing with the city and failure to report the value of the renovations on his federal tax returns, prosecutors said.
Kerik also made false statements to the White House about the renovations and his relationship with Interstate when being vetted for U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security in 2004, prosecutors said.
In imposing the four year sentence, U.S. District Judge Stephen Robinson, in White Plains, N.Y., didn't go along with the sentence of 27 to 33 montbhs recommended by the defense and prosecutors.
Kerik, 54, who also served as New York's Correction Commissioner, had been confined to his Franklin Lakes, N.J., home pending his sentencing.
