Skelos trial begins

Jury selection began Monday and continued into Tuesday in the corruption trial of Dean Skelos and his son, Adam.

Both the prosecution and defense worked on whittling down a pool of more than 100 prospective jurors to a group of 36 qualified jurors. The 12-person jury will be selected from that pool.

The process continued through Tuesday, as the Herald went to press, at federal court in Manhattan.

Skelos, 67, and his son Adam, 33, were accused by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara of using Skelos’s influence as the former majority leader of the Senate to gain lucrative jobs and payments for his son. Bharara alleges that Adam would claim to be able to use his father’s influence to help the companies he worked for, and that Skelos would threaten them with retribution if they fired his son.

The companies were originally unnamed, but have come to be known as real estate developer Glenwood Management of New Hyde Park, Physicians Reciprocal Insurers of Roslyn, and the Arizona-based AbTech, which won a grant from Nassau County in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Skelos is accused of forwarding legislation on the state level, and threatening the county, to help AbTech secure a $12 million contract, and in doing so, helping his son.

According to the federal government, Adam Skelos made more than $300,000 in salary from the scheme, despite being a no-show to his job at Physicians Reciprocal Insurers.

There were also allegations made that Skelos and his son tried to use their position to secure a position on the Town of Hempstead Board of Zoning Appeals for Adam Skelos’s wife, though she never received a seat on the board. Bharara also alleged that Adam tried to intimidate the representative of a chain of Greek diners into doing business with him.

Skelos and his son have pleaded not guilty to the charges levied against them.