Bovis Lend Lease is set to hand over $5 million to the city for construction project overcharges, the mayor’s office announced today. The settlement is the result of a New York City Department of Investigation review, which showed Bovis improperly paid overtime to workers when it wasn’t warranted. The DOI investigation showed that Bovis overcharged on more than 100 city-funded projects from 1999 to 2009. In a statement, DOI Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn said the investigation “shines a light on one such practice that drove up costs to the city.” TRD [more]

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau indicted the owners of
several New York City check-cashing companies yesterday for a
money-laundering scheme that authorities uncovered while investigating
a contaminated World Trade Center building. Rose Gill Hearn, the city’s
commissioner of investigations, said the alleged scheme was a “shell
game” in which checks related to the former Deutsche Bank building were
cashed. Riad Khalil and Neil Goldstein, owners of two of the check-cashing companies,
were slated to be arraigned yesterday on charges of falsifying business
records.
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