Craig Warga/New York Daily News
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been subpoenaed in the CityTime case.
This is a stand Mayor Bloomberg doesn’t want to take.
Bloomberg is being asked to take the witness stand in the upcoming criminal trial over the CityTime scheme that bilked taxpayers out of more than $ 500 million.
Mark Mazer, the consultant charged with masterminding the massive rip-off while working on the CityTime payroll system project, has subpoenaed Hizzoner in the case.
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“I think he has relevant information,” Mazer’s lawyer, Gerald Shargel, said Tuesday about the bid to have Bloomberg testify.
But city lawyers have moved to quash the subpoena, which must be approved by the judge handling the case against Mazer and several other defendants.
Manhattan Federal Court Judge George Daniels has yet to rule on the issue but has expressed skepticism about Bloomberg testifying.
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“Other witnesses, more directly involved in the development of CityTime, are far better situated to provide testimony based on direct personal knowledge about the issues at trial than is the mayor,” city lawyers said in their recent motion to quash the subpoena.
“In addition, the mayor’s appearance at trial is highly likely to become a distraction to this court and the jury that would threaten to obfuscate the real issues.”
Testimony from Bloomberg could potentially help the CityTime defendants if the mayor were to downplay the scandal like he has in the past.
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In July, Hizzoner claimed New Yorkers were “lucky” that the huge scam occurred because the city has since recovered hundreds of millions of dollars from the CityTime contractors.
“The whole system cost us something like $ 100 million and it should have been many times that,” Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show. “We were lucky because of the fraud. In the end it turned out that because of the recovery, that we saved a lot of money.”
CityTime was initially supposed to save millions of dollars by modernizing the city’s payroll system. But the cost of the project ballooned from roughly $ 70 million to more than $ 700 in taxpayer funds, and $ 500 million disappeared into overseas bank accounts.
Mazer is charged with various fraud, bribery and money laundering crimes.
He took more than $ 25 million in kickbacks for steering work to CityTime contractors, according to federal prosecutors.
dbeekman@nydailynews.com
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