Another man has admitted to his part in a scheme to bribe a juror in heavyweight boxer Goran Gogic’s international drug trafficking trial — just don’t ask him to identify his mobbed-up accomplice by name.
Valmir Krasniqi, 35, the manager at Positano, a Bay Ridge restaurant prosecutors say has ties to organized crime figures, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in Brooklyn Federal Court Wednesday, and could face up to six years behind bars based on sentencing guidelines.
On Wednesday, Krasniqi admitted he gave a photo of one of the Gogic jurors to a worker at the restaurant, and that he set up a meeting in his home. But when Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Dean asked him to clarify who the meeting was with, his lawyer, Mathew Mari, insisted Krasniqi wouldn’t be naming names.
“Judge, the defendant is not a cooperating witness,” Mari said. “He’s not saying that from his lips. He’s just not going to do it.”
Krasniqi and two other men were arrested in November, accused of plotting to offer a juror $100,000 to vote not guilty in Gogic’s trial. The pugilist is accused of trafficking more than 20 tons of cocaine through U.S. ports, coordinating between cocaine suppliers in Colombia, cargo ship crew members who transported tons of the drug, and port workers in Europe and the U.S.
Mustafa Fteja, the Positano worker who knew the juror, pleaded guilty on Feb. 19, while charges are still pending against the third suspect in the plot, Afrim Kupa — who has a lenghty criminal record and ties to both the Gambino crime family and Balkan organized crime.
Mari told Magistrate Judge Clay Kaminsky, before whom Krasniqi took the guilty plea, that Krasniqi didn’t know the trial he was helping fix involved Gogic.
“He knew it was a trial in federal court. He doesn’t know anything about Gogic,” the defense lawyer said, adding, “He never heard of him.”
The weekend before opening arguments were supposed to start, Fteja reached out to the juror several times on behalf of restaurateur Krasniqi and Kupa, convincing the juror to meet on Staten Island on Nov. 13, according to prosecutors.
Fteja asked the juror for a “favor,” then offered to pay for a not-guilty verdict, repeatedly contacting Krasniqi as the plot unfolded.
On Nov. 16, the feds surveilled a meeting of all three conspirators at Krasniqi’s Staten Island home, and the next day, all three were hauled into federal court to face charges. U.S. District Court Judge Joan Azrack put Gogic’s trial on hold and dismissed the whole jury.
“This is a good man who’s never been in trouble his whole life, and he’ll never be in trouble again,” Mari said outside the courtroom. “How he got involved in this is just a freak accident.”
Azrack is set to sentence Krasniqi on June 23. Mari said he’s contesting the government’s estimate that federal guidelines recommend a 57-to-71-month sentence, and said he believes the guidelines call for 27 to 33 months instead.
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