The Department of Investigation is in a brouhaha with a former employee who is suing the city for $5 million for wrongful termination from his $114,000-a-year job.
The employee, Ronald Benvenisti, claims in a suit filed this week in State Supreme Court in Manhattan that he was fired as manager of citywide information security for complaining about the job performance of the nephew of the department's former chief of staff, Elizabeth Glazer.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Investigation said in a statement that Mr. Benvenisti was fired in December 2002 for "multiple, serious acts of misconduct" including the illegal installation and use of police lights and a siren in his personal vehicle.
"At the time he was asked to resign, Mr. Benvenisti had engaged in multiple acts of misconduct, and the agency had received complaints about him from numerous people outside the agency," said the spokeswoman, Emily Gest.
The complaints, including one from the Police Department, involved Mr. Benvenisti's alleged abuse of authority, Ms. Gest said.
Mr. Benvenisti, 54, of Brooklyn, told The New York Sun the real reason he was fired was for complaining that the nephew, Eli Khedouri, was not adequately performing his duties and that he was hired out of nepotism after completing a summer internship.
Although Mr. Benvenisti acknowledges having given Mr. Khedouri glowing reviews and discussing a salary in excess of $90,000, as the DOI contends, Mr. Benvenisti said he only did so because he thought Mr. Khedouri would never get the job.
"I thought with some mentorship he would be useful, but we had a hiring freeze," Mr. Benvenisti said. "I said there was no way in hell that he was going to get it unless he knew somebody, which he did."
The city's Conflicts of Interest Board gave the DOI clearance to hire Mr. Khedouri as a computer security technician in July 2002. Mr. Benvenisti said he began complaining about Mr. Khedouri's performance in October of that year.
Ms.Glazer left the agency in October 2003 to tend to a relative's medical issues, according to the DOI.
Also that month, the NYPD suspended Mr. Benvenisti's license to possess a handgun, according to a letter from the NYPD to Mr. Benvenisti obtained by The New York Sun.
Mr. Benvenisti said the suspension took place following an incident at the 61st Precinct in which he turned in a defaced handgun but refused to identify himself.
As for the lights and siren in his car, Mr. Benvenisti said he had used them since 1998 to get to urgent jobs when he was a computer security technician at the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications before joining the DOI in 2001.
Ms. Glazer's attorney, Richard Mark, said in a statement that the allegations were false.
"The facts are undisputed that Ms. Glazer had absolutely nothing to do with the decision to hire her nephew," he said. "Indeed, she recused herself from the entire decision-making process. The final hiring decision was made only after a full department evaluation and clearance by the New York Conflicts of Interest Board."
Mr. Khedouri left the department in June 2003 to return to college, according to the DOI.