Source: Daily Bugle -- NYC Ed.
IC Date: September 14, 2018
BY BEN URICH
Sept. 14, 2018
NEW YORK — Three months after a cascade of bombs leveled tenements and apartment buildings around Hell's Kitchen and claimed eight-thousand lives, a suspect is now in custody.
In New York's financial and political circles he was known as a modest venture capitalist and philanthropist. In the city’s underworld, they called him 'The Kingpin.'
Wilson Fisk, 52, was arraigned at the federal courthouse in Manhattan on Friday on a dizzying array of charges, including drug-manufacturing, money-laundering, racketeering, fraud, bribery, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, arms trafficking, aggravated kidnapping, attempted murder, and blackmail.
Fisk was denied bail and remanded to the Raft, a high-security prison usually reserved for supervillains and terrorists.
While the Hell's Kitchen bombings were not included in the indictment, sources say future charges may be pending, and New York U.S. Attorney David Archer says they have their man.
"If you've never heard of Wilson Fisk before now, it's because he never wanted you to," Archer said in an interview with the Daily Bugle. "Mr. Fisk ran the table on organized crime in this city for three years. He killed thousands of New Yorkers, not to terrorize or foment some ideology, but for simple greed. It was the single bloodiest con in American history."
According to sources within the U.S. Attorney's office and SHIELD, Fisk is believed to have enlisted the help of several organized crime outfits of leveling the Hell's Kitchen properties to make way for lucrative residential and commercial developments.
While many of the buildings destroyed in Hell's Kitchen are zoned for affordable housing, fast-tracked legislation moving through the City Council would have rezoned the Manhattan neighborhood, transforming the blown-out properties into lucrative real estate.
An independent investigation by the Bugle has verified that many of the properties leveled in the bombings were owned, or subsequently purchased, by businesses or individuals connected to Mr. Fisk.
(LINK: Wilson Fisk's web.)
Council member Mariah Dillard (D-Harlem), chair of the powerful Land Use Committee and sponsor of the "Clinton Recovery and Reinvestment Act," could not be reached for comment. A committee vote on the legislation is scheduled for Monday.
Dozens of other organized crime figures, senior officers in the NYPD, and luminaries of New York's financial industry were indicted along with Mr. Fisk in an unprecedented dragnet. Dozens of holding companies and assets owned by Fisk's conglomerate, Confederated Global Investments, were seized by SHIELD in a series of early morning raids.
According to sources, Fisk himself was brought in by a group of New York-based vigilantes and metahumans, who had discovered his hideout in a long-abandoned subway station beneath City Hall. The association, known popularly as 'The Defenders,' first came to prominence during the Hell’s Kitchen relief and recovery efforts. Members reportedly include the vigilante Daredevil, private investigator Jessica Jones, bar-owner Luke Cage, and others.
"This is just the beginning for finding closure for the people of Hell’s Kitchen," said Franklin Nelson, an attorney for many displaced Hell’s Kitchen residents fighting the rezoning and building sales. "We’re ready to begin rebuilding our lives, for the better, without living in constant fear of the boogeymen who try to keep us under-thumb. I, for one, hope that the next boogeyman who comes around Hell’s Kitchen thinks twice about trying to rule this neighborhood. We’re not afraid of you anymore."
Location: New York
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Originally Posted: 03 Nov 2018 14:26