By Jeremy Roebuck, Philadelphia Inquirer, July 9, 2024, 11:16 a.m.
George E. Norcross III entered a not guilty plea Tuesday morning to racketeering charges alleging he illegally muscled rivals out of property deals in Camden to take advantage of millions of dollars in state tax breaks.
Smiling as he arrived in Mercer County court, the 68-year-old Democratic power broker sat silently throughout a brief hearing before Judge Peter E. Warshaw as his attorney, Michael Critchley, entered his plea.
Repeatedly during the proceedings, Norcross turned toward news media cameras arrayed in the jury box offering a clenched smile.
In a statement, Critchley maintained his client had done nothing wrong and that he expects Norcross will be fully exonerated.
“As will be shown, everything he and his codefendants did was for the benefit of the city of Camden and Cooper University Health Care,” the attorney said, adding: “Anyone reviewing the indictment will see these are charges in search of a crime.”
Related: Norcross, co-defendants plead not guilty to corruption allegations (Politico)
Earlier story below
By Elise Young, New York Times July 9, 2024, 3:00 a.m. ET
George E. Norcross III, a longtime kingmaker in New Jersey politics, is scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday morning to face charges that he manipulated property deals to benefit from millions of dollars in government tax breaks.
Mr. Norcross and five co-defendants were named in a 13-count racketeering indictment unsealed last month. They are accused of unlawfully obtaining property and development rights along the Delaware River waterfront of Camden, a Philadelphia suburb that for decades ranked among the nation’s poorest and most violent cities.
Mr. Norcross, 68, a career insurance executive, emerged as a powerful Democratic fund-raiser in the early 1990s, without ever holding elective office. Backed by a network of political allies whom he helped send to the state legislature, Mr. Norcross cast himself as Camden’s savior. Upon a landscape of industrial blight, he envisioned gleaming campuses for the life sciences, biotechnology and manufacturing industries in the city of his birth.
At the heart of Mr. Norcross’s advocacy, though, wasn’t high-minded civic duty, but a 12-year scheme of personal greed, according to Matthew J. Platkin, the New Jersey attorney general. Together, the defendants conspired to influence government officials, develop the Camden waterfront and collect government-issued tax breaks that shaved millions of dollars off project costs, state prosecutors have said.
Also charged with racketeering in the first degree were: Mr. Norcross’s brother, Philip A. Norcross, 61, of Philadelphia, the chief executive of a Camden-based law firm; Dana L. Redd, 56, of Sicklerville, N.J., a former Camden mayor; William M. Tambussi, 66, of Brigantine, N.J., George Norcross’s longtime personal lawyer; Sidney R. Brown, 67, of Philadelphia, the chief executive of NFI, a trucking and logistics company; and John J. O’Donnell, 61, of Newtown, Pa., an executive of the Michaels Organization, a residential development company.
The crime is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
This is a developing story and will be updated later
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