Mayor enriching his backers with taxpayer dollars, including “largest award of its kind” to his son’s project
Corrupt Carlos Giménez’s tenure as Mayor of Miami-Dade County is coming to end next month, but that isn’t stopping him from lining his family’s and donors’ pockets on the way out the door.
Despite the economic slowdown due to the coronavirus, Carlos Giménez’s friends and donors are profiting handsomely from taxpayer dollars:
- Giménez’s son is still poised to benefit from his partnership in a project receiving a nearly $5 million dollar taxpayer subsidy. Mayor Giménez’s son will now have another six months to get the financing together for the steel mill being built on county land, which the Miami Herald notes is the “largest award of its kind that the county has on record.”
- Giménez is also “rushing” to get approval before he leaves office on an up to $14 million taxpayer grant to one of his top donors, Genting, for development on its monorail project. The taxpayer award includes $6 million to Genting even if the project does not go forward.
Corrupt Carlos has taken tens of thousands of dollars from the casino developer for his mayoral campaigns, and in return, partnered with a Genting lobbyist to pave the way for the monorail project by killing a proposed Metrorail extension into South Miami-Dade in 2018. According to the Miami Herald, Corrupt Carlos’ efforts to kill that extension left funds available for Genting’s taxpayer-funded monorail project which promises to be the “most expensive in a generation.”
“It’s no coincidence that a month before Mayor Giménez’s term is up, Miami-Dade taxpayers are on the hook for the ‘largest award of its kind’ to his son and a donor project that is the ‘most expensive in a generation,’” said DCCC Spokesperson Sarah Guggenheimer. “Corrupt Carlos is a career politician who has consistently used his office to enrich himself, his family and his donors at taxpayers’ expense.”
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