If they thought they had neutralized former Doral City Manager Joe Carollo when they fired him, Mayor Luigi Boria and the councilwomen who voted for his ouster have another thing coming.
He’s never talked so much.
Carollo — coming off a TV show and radio tour — told Ladra that he was going to have a series of press conferences to highlight all the different shenanigans that he says have been afoot in the western edge city and which he claims are the real reason behind his ouster. The first one will be this afternoon, he said Sunday, and the subject will be what he says is a too cozy business relationship between Boria and the Maduro government in Venezuela.
“I will have the paperwork to back up what I’m talking about,” Carollo said.
He began to show some of that paperwork at the pres conference that he had days before he was fired. They are supposed to indicate Boria’s business in Venezuela — almost $50 million in computer sales over the course of eight years — which could only happen with the blessing of the Maduro regime, something that might not fly so well in what could be known as Little Caracas.
The relationship was the subject of a Univision 23 investigation by Gerardo Reyes, who also questioned why Boria settled with the IRS for half of $250,000 seized in 2008 after the mayor deposited somewhere around $1.7 million in $10,000 increments. The mayor’s attorney tells Reyes that it is because it would have cost more to fight for it.
Making good on his earlier threats that he would speak more once he was axed, Carollo told Ladra he had more information than what Univision had and would present so-called evidence on Monday. Talk about baiting.
This one-time ally of Boria’s who helped the one-term councilman with his 2012 mayoral campaign said he did so only because the pastor at their church asked him to help and that he has been cooperating with authorities on a number of issues since last year.
“Had I known then what I know now or what I knew in May of 2013, I would not have helped him at all. In fact, I would have helped Frank Bolaños,” Carollo told Ladra.
Boria has not returned repeated phone calls and messages. He turned away from Ladra and Mira TV video reporter Axel Oliveros at the meeting where Carollo was fired, refusing to answer questions and saying only that he wanted to move on and look toward the future.
Carollo says that the near future, at least, will be full of press conferences. He wants to do one subject at a time because he wants each to get the attention he says each deserves. One would surmise, from past allegations, that he will talk about land deals and the money Boria said he got for his children’s share of a property that sought upzoning, as well as supposed Sunshine Law violations and perhaps election law violations from the 2012 campaign.
I’m sure I’m forgetting something. But, hey, Carollo will remind me.
“Mayor Boria says he is an open book but I am going to show you how those book’s pages peel back one by one,” Carollo said.
Ex Doral Manager Joe Carollo keeps talking post firing added by Ladra on
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