By Yepoka Yeebo
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau owned stock in a company tied to Rep. Charles Rangel's ethics probe, the New York Times reported.
Morgenthau introduced Rangel to Eugene Isenberg, chief executive of Nabors Industries, which was lobbying Rangel's Ways and Means Committee to preserve a tax loophole that would help his company save hundreds of millions of dollars, the Times said.
The loophole was kept open, saving the company $650 million according to the Times. Isenberg then donated $800,000 to City College for a pet project had there that involved a new center to be named after him, the Times said.
That interaction has drawn the attention of a Congressional probe.
Morgenthau has argued that he simply introduced Rangel and Isenberg to raise money for City College. “I was just trying to support a worthy cause,” Morgenthau told the Times in 2009.
However, the Times reported that at the time, Morgenthau was an investor in Nabors Industries, and suggests he stood to gain financially from the tax loophole Rangel helped protect. The holdings were revealed in financial discolsure forms Morgenthau filed with the city's Conflicts of Interest Board.
The House ethics committee is examining Rangel's fund raising for City College’s Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service. Rangel, 80, has been under investigation for months because of allegations he violated House gift rules when he took corporate-sponsored junkets to the Caribbean, did not pay taxes on his vacation home in the Dominican Republic, among other accusations.
Morgenthau, 91, retired in January after 35 years as Manhattan district attorney.
