Bank's suspicious activity report of Spitzer, click here.
It was a routine transaction with an unusual request: Eliot Spitzer, then governor of New York state, had asked a Manhattan bank to remove his name and account information from a $5,000 wire transfer to a company called QAT Consulting Group.
The request, if granted, would have violated the Code of Federal Regulations. It also triggered a mandatory bank investigation into the transaction and generated a suspicious activity report, or SAR, that has never been released by the government.
It was Aug. 6, 2007, and Spitzer, in his inaugural year as governor, was immersed in a very public political war with then-Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno. That morning, NBC's ''Today'' show ran a segment on their feud over Spitzer's role in revealing details about Bruno's misuse of state aircraft.
But the finger-pointing between the political titans was only a tremor compared to the scandal taking shape that Monday in the New York City offices of the former North Fork Bank.
The bank's wire room, citing a federal regulation that requires banks to keep identifying information on clients who make wire transfers, denied the request for anonymity by Spitzer's private banker, Adam Brenner, a vice president at the Madison Avenue branch.
"In response, Mr. Brenner pointed out that a prior transaction in the amount of $10,000 had previously been processed similarly on July 11, 2007, between these same parties," states the SAR filed by North Fork Bank.
"The August 6th wire transfer was denied and later processed as an internal bank transfer between the two clients' accounts."
The highly detailed, five-page SAR -- obtained by the Times Union -- confirms how Spitzer's peculiar request three years ago triggered the federal investigation that unraveled a high-priced prostitution ring called the Emperors Club and brought down a governor in the process.
Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=923168#ixzz0lho8L2cp
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