Even After Confessing, Hevesi May Face an Investigation

Prosecutors may press on with their probe of the office of state comptroller Alan Hevesi even after Hevesi's resignation in a plea deal Friday, a spokeswoman for the Albany Country district attorney's office said.

The spokeswoman, Rachel McEneny-Spencer, said the "door is not closed" on its probe of the office concerning the misuse of state services.

Hevesi's chief of staff, Jack Chartier, used a state-employed driver to chauffeur a star of the 1970s undercover cop show "The Mod Squad," Peggy Lipton, a friend of Mr. Chartier's who was suffering from colon cancer. Mr. Chartier testified before a grand jury investigating allegations against Hevesi.

On Friday, Hevesi pled guilty to a single Class E felony of defrauding the government and resigned from office as part of a plea deal that allowed him to avoid prison time. He admitted that he used state employees for non-official purposes, including serving as his ailing wife's driver, personal aide and companion. He also admitted that he never planned on reimbursing the state for the services.

The investigation into Hevesi led by district attorney David Soares drew criticism yesterday from Hevesi's attorney, who told The New York Sun he has "a lot of bad feelings" about the case.

The lawyer, Joel Cohen, a partner at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP, which was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars from Hevesi's campaign account to represent Hevesi, declined to go into detail about his concerns, saying he didn't want to violate attorney-client confidentiality.

He did, however, accuse the district attorney's office of leaking to the press sensitive information about the case, including a memo two weeks ago to Hevesi giving him a deadline to testify before a grand jury. Mr. Cohen said he received a phone call from a New York Post reporter inquiring about the memo an hour and a half after he received it on his office's fax machine.

Ms. McEneny-Spencer denied that her office was the source of the leak. "We believe it came from Mr. Hevesi's people," she said. "It was faxed from a secure fax line. "

"The last place in the world we would call was the New York Post," Mr. Cohen said.

Mr. Cohen also criticized the Republican majority leader of the state Senate, Joseph Bruno, for calling on Hevesi to resign in October, months after Mr. Bruno was aware of that he himself was a subject of a federal investigation into his outside business interests. "What hypocrisy," Mr. Cohen said.

Mr. Cohen said Hevesi would not have pled guilty if he were merely accused of using a state employee to ferry around the comptroller's wife, Carol Hevesi. The more damaging details involved the employee's services as a handyman inside the wife's home, where he helped her move furniture, water plants, and use exercise equipment.