The city’s Department of Education is poised to award a food delivery contract worth $100 million or more to a firm with ties to a company that once ripped off the school lunch program.
The firm, H. Schrier & Co., is run by the sons of two brothers who once ran Irving Libertoff, Inc., a firm that was fined—and its president imprisoned—after a federal investigation of bid rigging in the 1990s, the New York Post reported today.
City Limits first reported on the potential DOE award to Schrier last year—revealing that the city’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services, which had previously found Schrier to be a “non-responsible bidder” had awarded the company a contract last year to provide food for the city’s jail system.
It’s important to note, as the Post does, that neither the men running Schrier nor the company itself were ever accused of wrongdoing. But Schrier did ingest the assets of the Irving Libertoff Co. and still operates of the same address Irving Libertoff used and Stuart Libertoff, the defunct firm’s one-time president, “has until recently played an active role” at Schrier, according to the Post.