Federal prosecutors alleged that Silver received around $700,000 in bribes and kickbacks from a real estate law firm. Grand jury indicts Silver in N.Y.

A federal grand jury has indicted former New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver on corruption charges, the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York announced Thursday.

Silver, an immensely powerful figure in New York politics for decades, was arrested by FBI agents last month on multiple counts of corruption charges. Federal prosecutors alleged that Silver, who served as Assembly speaker since 1994 before stepping down shortly after his arrest, received about $700,000 in bribes and kickbacks from a real estate law firm. Federal authorities also said that Silver made about $5.3 million from Weitz & Luxenberg, a private law firm where he worked for more than a decade, despite the fact that he “never performed any legal work whatsoever,” according to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.


The indictment, released Thursday afternoon, alleges that Silver “engaged in a secret and corrupt scheme to deprive the citizens of the state of his honest services as an elected legislator” by masking the millions of dollars he made illegally as “legitimate income.”

It also argues that Silver made efforts “to conceal his corrupt sources of outside income from the Moreland Commission,” the anti-corruption probe whose cases Bharara has taken over following Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s decision to shut it down last year.

Silver’s attorneys, Joel Cohen and Steven Molo, said they would keep “fighting” to exonerate Silver.

“We can now begin to fight for his total vindication. We will do our fighting where it should be done: in court,” the two said in a joint statement obtained by The New York Times.

The attorney’s office first announced the indictment on Twitter on Thursday afternoon.

Multiple outlets reported that the case has been assigned to District Court Judge Valerie Caproni, former FBI general counsel and enforcement officer at the SEC.

Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, remains a member of the Assembly but ceded his power in the Democratic conference days after he was arrested. He has maintained his innocence since his arrest.