The longtime mayor of Clark Township in New Jersey, Salvatore Bonaccorso, is at the center of yet another scandal.
After facing calls to resign last April for his alleged use of racist and sexist language, new charges have been filed against the mayor, accusing him of corruption related to his personal landscaping business, reports NBC News New York.
The charges — announced on Monday by New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin and the Office of Public Integrity and Accountability (OPIA) — accuse Bonaccorso of a number of improper activities to help his company, Bonaccorso & Son LLC.
The 63-year-old allegedly lied to multiple municipalities in order to approve the removal of hundreds of underground storage tanks, used municipal resources, and forged signatures for his personal gain.
He’s now accused of official misconduct, tampering with public records or information, witness tampering, forgery and falsifying or tampering with records, according to prosecutors.
The charges follow an OPIA Corruption Bureau investigation, which also revealed that Bonaccorso operated his private business from the mayoral office and used an engineer’s identity to forge signatures on permit applications.
“In fact, it is alleged that neither Bonaccorso nor his company have the necessary underground-storage-tank-removal license required to do such work,” said the attorney general’s office, which claimed the tank removal jobs made Bonaccorso’s company hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Bonaccorso, who has been in office since 2000, first came under scrutiny in April of last year, when alleged racist and sexist comments emerged from recordings between him and a former police chief.
“They was looking for some —— walking around or something,” he allegedly said in one recording, as well as “f—–g hang the (racial slur) up there.”
The recordings were said to include the use of racial slurs to describe Jewish and Black people.
After reports emerged, Bonaccorso issued an apology, calling his language “hurtful and insensitive … it was wrong. I’m embarrassed and ashamed to have spoken that way about a race of people,” he said in a post to the official Clark Town YouTube channel.
“I have learned, and I have changed and it will not happen again,” he added at the time.
Evan Rosen
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