Unreliable witnesses. Shoddy circumstantial evidence. And investigators misinterpreting campaign finance and money laundering laws.
Those are the key factors that state prosecutors relied on to justify their decision to drop the high-profile public corruption case against former ex-Miami city commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla and William “Bill” Riley Jr., a lobbyist and attorney who previously represented commercial real estate investors David and Leila Centner, who own the private school chain, Centner Academy.
The criminal charges filed in September of last year against Diaz de la Portilla and Riley hinged on $245,000 in campaign donations from the Centners to political committees controlled by the Republican politician. In an arrest affidavit, criminal and ethics investigators alleged the funds represented payola to Diaz de la Portilla in exchange for his masterminding a scuttled no-bid deal giving the Centners authority to build a $10 million youth sports complex at a city-owned park near one of their campuses.
But Broward assistant state attorneys Kayla Bramnick and Julio Gonzalez Jr. determined the Centner contributions were legal, and that there was no evidence of “corrupt intent, falsification or quid pro quo arrangements,” a close-out memo dated Tuesday, when the charges were dropped, states.
In an emailed statement sent Wednesday evening, Diaz de la Portilla’s defense attorney Ben Kuehne said Bramnick and Gonzalez reached the right conclusion. “This is a day of complete vindication for Alex, who did not do anything wrong,” Kuehne said.
Witnesses provide conflicting statements
In the biggest blow to the case, a former city bureaucrat recanted his initial sworn statement that Diaz de la Portilla derailed a planned mixed-use project involving the city-owned park in order to steer a new deal with the Centners in 2019 after he took office.
Jason Walker, then-executive director of the Miami Omni Community Redevelopment Agency, now says that he was mistaken and that the mixed-use project stalled out due to other reasons unrelated to Diaz de la Portilla, the close-out memo states.
The mixed-use project, which would also have included land owned by Miami-Dade Public Schools, was abandoned before Diaz de la Portilla was elected, and the effort to allow the Centners to develop at the city-owned park was started by another elected official, then-city commissioner Ken Russell, according to the close-out memo.
Russell also made contradictory statements in a deposition, acknowledging he had no knowledge about the Centners’ proposal after he resigned from office at the end of 2022.
Circumstantial evidence not enough
Investigators mistakenly relied on the timing of the Centners’ donations as evidence that the funds represented bribes funneled through Riley to Diaz de la Portilla, the close-out memo states. Testimony from other witnesses, including the Centners, determined the donations were lawful and documented in financial disclosure forms.
Bank records also verified that the Centners and Riley were not attempting to conceal the contributions as alleged in the original arrest affidavit. The donations were made through an entity managed by Riley, but it was done this way “solely for logistical purposes and did not involve efforts to conceal the transactions,” the close-out memo states.
Investigators misinterpret laws
Bramnick and Gonzalez, the prosecutors, chastised the investigators for not having a grasp on the laws they accused Diaz de la Portilla and Riley of breaking. For instance, the close-out memo singles out Karl Ross, an investigator with the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust, noting he admitted to “limited familiarity with relevant laws and failed to independently verify key allegations.”
“Witness testimony is unreliable, and lawful actions have been misconstrued as criminal,” the close-out memo states. “Substantial follow-up investigations and depositions have occurred that reveal the foundation of the entire investigation was misguided and buttressed by unverified information,” the close-out memo concluded.
