NEW ORLEANS — Three businessmen who contributed money to Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s political campaigns have been questioned by federal investigators in recent weeks, in a sign that a federal grand jury probe into the mayor is intensifying.
All three people known to have been questioned by the FBI are developers who contributed to her campaigns, records show. At least one of them had directly corresponded with the mayor, by text or email, and the FBI was aware of those conversations.
Lawyers for all three men said their clients had done nothing wrong, and that the federal agents were merely inquiring about the possibility that they had given Cantrell money or gifts for some sort of favorable treatment.
However, it’s still unclear what, if anything, the mayor did for the benefit of those businessmen.
Cantrell has said little about the stepped-up activity in the investigation, which has been open for well over a year. At a recent news conference, she hinted at a racial animus to the federal inquiry, saying that being subjected to investigation “seems to be kind of prevalent relative to Black leadership. I am not exempt from that.”
She expanded on those sentiments in an interview Thursday with WWL Louisiana, in which she said she was drawing on “lessons … of the past, specifically with African-Americans in leadership in our city. And as you get into that last term, this seems to be a practice and one that I’m experiencing firsthand as well.”
Cantrell did not mention names, but the final terms of the city’s last two Black mayors – Ray Nagin and Marc Morial – were marred by federal probes of City Hall.
Morial was never charged, but his uncle and several members of his inner circle were convicted in corruption investigations. Nagin received a 10-year prison sentence for taking bribes and fraud.
A possible nexus
A possible nexus for the new questioning is Fouad Zeton, the Syrian-born entrepreneur and political rainmaker who has boasted of having a close relationship to Cantrell and many other local politicians.
In April, Zeton pleaded guilty to fraud charges.
Federal authorities have questioned Zeton in recent weeks, and they have also sent out a number of grand jury subpoenas seeking information about a former business associate of his, Randy Farrell.
Farrell, who owns a third-party building inspection firm, IECI, pleaded guilty earlier this year to federal tax fraud. He was sentenced in July to five years of probation and ordered to pay $1.1 million in restitution. He’s already paid more than $750,000, his attorney Rick Simmons said.
Zeton and Farrell used to own a home together on Sylvia Drive in Lakewood North, records show. Farrell gave up his share of the property last year, records show.
Zeton has pleaded guilty to conspiring with a New Orleans police officer to rip off an insurance company by falsely reporting a number of artworks stolen, and using a bogus appraisal to inflate their value. He is due to be sentenced in February.
The phony art heist does not appear to have any direct connection to the investigation into Cantrell, but it may have opened the door to the broader probe. The FBI raided two of Zeton’s properties in June 2021 and seized his phone, according to sources.
Cantrell and Zeton know each other well. A former boxer, Zeton memorably got up on the stage at Cantrell’s party when she ran first in the 2017 mayoral primary and handed the incoming chief executive a championship belt.
The sources said Zeton’s phone contained direct communications between Cantrell and Zeton – and in some of them, Cantrell appeared to be indirectly asking for money or favors. Lawyers familiar with the case told The Times-Picayune those communications may have given prosecutors a legal basis to obtain and scrutinize Cantrell’s texts and emails more broadly.
Zeton’s sentencing has been delayed twice since his guilty plea, which is common in federal cases when the person awaiting sentencing is seen as critical to a still-pending case.
Sources close to the case confirmed that some of the FBI’s recent questions have concerned Cantrell’s interactions with Zeton.
Zeton has bragged about his relationship with Cantrell, whom he has described as a “friend” and a “good mayor.” He leased a hotel business at the Magnolia Mansion to trumpeter Irvin Mayfield’s wife and hosted a concert by Mayfield there in May 2021, after Mayfield was convicted on federal charges of stealing more than $1.3 million from the city’s public library charity.
Mayfield was waiting to be sentenced for his crimes when Cantrell introduced him that night, calling on people to support him as a “true son of the city.” Zeton also took to social media to express support for Mayfield, calling him a friend.
Zeton last year suggested to reporters that he is merely a stepping stone for federal prosecutors.
“I have no idea who is the big fish, but I’m not the one,” Zeton said then, adding: “This has nothing to do with artwork.”
Safety & Permits investigation
Federal authorities’ renewed interest in Farrell is unusual, since he was already convicted and sentenced in July.
But sources told WWL Louisiana that prosecutors were investigating him for possible corruption charges as part of a larger probe into local building and permitting departments and wound up settling for a tax case instead.
Several clients of Farrell’s property-inspection business told The Times-Picayune they have also received grand-jury subpoenas seeking details about their interactions with Farrell, such as the scope of work performed and the cost, according to a source familiar with the subpoenas.
Separately, prosecutors have also subpoenaed emails about Farrell that were sent by a former city employee, Jennifer Cecil, when she was the director of the city’s One Stop licensing and permitting operation inside the Department of Safety & Permits.
Cecil was fired by the Cantrell administration back in 2019, and sources close to the investigation told WWL the feds want to know if the mayor did that to protect Farrell from people who were investigating him.
Two years later, Jared Munster, the former director of Safety & Permits, told WWL Louisiana in an interview that Cecil had been helping to investigate Farrell and his associates, who then complained to Cantrell.
Munster said those complaining were “voicing … fraudulent complaints to try to paint people holding them accountable in a bad light.”
When Cantrell spoke to WWL last week, she said the leadership of Safety and Permits is much better today than it was, and she denied taking advice or direction from Farrell or anyone else in making personnel decisions there.
“I don’t do favors,” she said. “I’ve never had conversations with anyone – Randy Farrell or anyone else – relative to who I need to put in place in leadership to make it easy for anybody. That’s not how I lead. That’s not leadership and that’s not my style. So, I don’t know where that’s coming from.”
Cantrell reiterated that she is fully cooperating with authorities but declined to answer questions about what information federal investigators have sought from her, calling questions about that “Inappropriate.”
“You have to ask them, you really do,” she said.
She described Zeton in the recent WWL interview as “a friend to political officials throughout the city of New Orleans,” but said she had never taken any gifts or anything else from him. She also said she’d never been asked about such gifts before.
French Quarter apartment
Zeton was also friends with a major French Quarter developer, who received a grand jury subpoena seeking texts and other documents related to his discussions with Cantrell about the possibility of her renting an apartment from him, according to two sources with knowledge of the subpoena.
The sources said Cantrell approached the businessman sometime after August, when the City Council barred the mayor from further stays in the city-owned apartment in the Upper Pontalba building in Jackson Square. The sources said Cantrell asked if the businessman could rent her a place.
The developer offered the mayor a lease at a rate above fair-market value and she declined, the sources said. She asked again for a lower rate at another unit in the same building and the owner refused, the sources said.
One of the sources also said the FBI has separately approached several hoteliers about whether Cantrell or a member of her NOPD security detail, Jeffrey Vappie, ever stayed in their properties.
Vappie’s wife has accused him in a divorce filing of having an affair with Cantrell, and an internal NOPD investigation found Vappie spent hours on the clock alone with Cantrell inside the Pontalba apartment.
Both Cantrell and Vappie have denied an affair.
-WWL Investigator Katie Moore and The Times-Picayune’s Gordon Russell contributed to this report