Mayor took strip club cash

2005-07-20 13:33

California - The government of the US city of San Diego was in turmoil on Tuesday after its acting mayor was convicted of taking bribes from a strip club owner to weaken a law barring nude lap dances.

A jury found Michael Zucchet, another city councilman, and a lobbyist guilty of conspiracy, wire fraud and extortion charges on Monday, the day Zucchet took over as the new acting mayor of the seventh largest US city.

The so-called "stripper-gate" federal corruption trial has rocked the idyllic California coastal city of 1.3 million people and left its government in shambles.

"The verdicts in this case show that the citizens of San Diego have the right to hold their public officials to a higher and better standard than the conduct that was evidenced in this trial," said prosecutor Carol Lam of the verdicts.

The panel found that Zucchet and Councilman Ralph Inzunza accepted $23 000 from the owner of Cheetahs Totally Nude club in return for a pledge to help relax a city ordinance barring nude dancers from touching their customers.

Prosecutors say the councilmen took money from strip club owner Michael Galardi in exchange for a promise to vote for the repeal of San Diego's tough "no-touch" nude dancing rule.

The conviction came as Zucchet, the city's deputy mayor, had just assumed the duties of Dick Murphy, who resigned as mayor on Friday amid a controversy over his handling of the city's two-billion-dollar pension deficit.

Zucchet and Inzunza were automatically suspended from office following their convictions at the end of a trial that exposed the seedy underbelly of the apparently urbane city.

The men are planning an appeal and denied wrongdoing and insisted that the cash they received constituted legitimate campaign contributions.

- AFP