Stenger To Plead Guilty To Federal Corruption Charges
Updated at 3:30 p.m., May 2 with reactions from officials and legal experts — Former St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger will plead guilty on Friday to federal corruption charges — just four days after his indictment was announced.
Stenger was charged Monday with steering county contracts to a major campaign contributor. He resigned the same day.
The accusations, laid out in detail in a 44-page indictment, centered around five schemes to “defraud and deprive the citizens of St. Louis County of their right to [Stenger’s] honest and faithful services,” as prosecutors put it in a release on Monday. They include:
Working to try to get Cardinal Insurance, led by Stenger supporter John Rallo, insurance contracts from the county in 2015 and 2016;
Securing a 2016 contract for Rallo’s consulting company, Cardinal Creative Consulting, to work with the St. Louis County Port Authority;
Making sure that Rallo’s company, Wellston Holdings LLC, had the inside track to purchase two pieces of land, one in 2016 and one in 2017;
Directing a state lobbying contract for the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership to an unnamed company in exchange for campaign donations
https://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/stenger-plead-guilty-federal-corruption-charges