Prosecutors drop charges against former Miami city commissioner and lobbyist
The Broward State Attorney’s Office has dropped criminal charges against former Miami City Commissioner Alex Díaz de la Portilla and lobbyist Bill Riley Jr., the agency said in a news release Wednesday, putting an end to a high-profile corruption case that was set for trial next month.
“After a substantial follow-up investigation and extensive depositions of witnesses, we have concluded that there is no reasonable likelihood of conviction,” Broward State Attorney Harold F. Pryor said in a statement. “When the arrests were made, I promised that our prosecutors would pursue justice in this matter and that is what we have done.”
Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Miguel M. de la O, who had been presiding over the case, gathered the two sides during a Zoom hearing Wednesday afternoon. During the brief hearing, de la O said the attorneys could go into more detail during a Friday hearing.
Attorney Jared Whaley, who represents Riley, said he would ask the judge on Friday to order Miami-Dade Ethics Commission investigator Karl Ross, who was a lead investigator on the case, to demonstrate why he shouldn’t be held in contempt, alleging that Ross made “material misrepresentations and omissions” in the arrest affidavit.
Ross did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Whaley’s allegation. Leo Mendoza, a spokesman for the Ethics Commission, said the agency has no comment.
In a written statement, Whaley thanked Broward prosecutors for “acting honorably and diligently in this matter, and ensuring that justice was done.”
“During the year-long pendency of this case, Mr. Riley lost his parents, Carolyn and Bill Sr., who never wavered in their belief that Bill would be vindicated,” Whaley said. “He is, and always has been, innocent of the heinous charges against him, and his parents are undoubtedly smiling from Heaven today.”
Benedict Kuehne, an attorney for Díaz de la Portilla, said in a statement Wednesday night that “this is a day of complete Vindication for Alex, who did not do anything wrong.”
“When this case was first brought at a time chosen for election interference, Alex Diaz de la Portilla promised the community that he had done nothing wrong,” Kuehne said. “Today is a clear demonstration of the fulfillment of his promise.”
Díaz de la Portilla and Riley were arrested in September 2023 on a host of corruption charges. The initial case was centered on a land deal with private school operators that Díaz de la Portilla championed. Riley was a lobbyist representing the private school operators, David and Leila Centner of Centner Academy. Broward state attorneys were prosecuting the case because Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle had a conflict of interest related to Riley’s father, Bill Riley Sr.
Prosecutors had alleged that Díaz de la Portilla and Riley Jr. conspired to launder $245,000 in political contributions from the Centners in exchange for Díaz de la Portilla’s support for the couple’s proposal to build a sports complex that could be used by students at their namesake school, as well as by members of the public, on a piece of city-owned land called Biscayne Park.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools had initially been interested in the land and had been working on a plan to relocate a public school called iPrep Academy onto Biscayne Park, which is across the street from one of the Centner Academy locations. The plan would have doubled the number of iPrep student seats and created workforce housing on the site.
The City Commission approved the Centner plan in April of 2022, with Díaz de la Portilla voting in favor.
According to the 2023 arrest affidavit from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics, Riley in 2020 and 2022 routed nearly a quarter-million dollars in campaign contributions into two political committees that Díaz de la Portilla controlled. The affidavit alleged that Riley routed the money through a newly created Delaware corporation “to conceal the origin of the funds.”
But in a Nov. 19 closeout memo explaining why the charges were being dismissed, Assistant State Attorney Kayla Bramnick — who took over the case in June — and Assistant State Attorney in Charge Julio Gonzalez Jr. called into question the viability of the original case.
“While these allegations raised serious concerns, a thorough review of the evidence that has been discovered through extensive follow-up investigation and depositions revealed significant weaknesses in the case,” Bramnick and Gonzalez wrote. “Witness testimony proved inconsistent and critical elements of the crimes charged cannot be supported by the evidence.”
Bramnick and Gonzalez wrote that the Miami-Dade County Public Schools plan was “abandoned” before Díaz de la Portilla’s 2019 election. That stands in contradiction to statements by the school district itself, which told the Miami Herald that it had a briefing with Díaz de la Portilla on the public school plan in January of 2021 and that “efforts to communicate on the matter continued” until the Centner agreement was ultimately approved in April 2022.
In response to the news about the dropped charges, David Centner said in a statement that, “While we are not surprised by the prosecutor’s decision not to move forward, we are grateful that it puts an end to this chapter.”
He referred to what he described as “false reporting” that he said “led to the end of a philanthropic project that would have been wonderful for the community.” In March, the Centners pulled out of the sports complex deal after community pushback.
The close-out memo from prosecutors also said the political committee contributions from the Centners were “lawful and transparently documented.”
“There was no evidence that these contributions were tied to [Díaz de la Portilla’s] support for their proposal,” Bramnick and Gonzalez wrote.
Prosecutors wrote that “there was no evidence of corrupt intent, falsification, or quid-pro-quo arrangements.”
The closeout memo added that deposition testimony from “key witnesses” contradicted the state’s initial theory.
One of those witnesses is Ross, a lead investigator on the case who works for the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust. Prosecutors wrote in the memo that Ross “admitted to limited familiarity with relevant laws and failed to independently verify key allegations, such as the existence of the [Miami-Dade School Board] proposal.”
Ross did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the prosecutors’ claim, which contradicts previous statements from the School Board about their plan to relocate a public school onto Biscayne Park.
This story was originally published November 20, 2024 at 11:16 AM.
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