Rubén Díaz Sr., a councilman from the Bronx, had his committee dissolved after making homophobic comments in 2019. Kalman Yeger, a Brooklyn councilman, was removed from the immigration committee in 2019 after saying that Palestine did not exist.
Last year, Mr. Deutsch, who was first elected to the Council in 2013, made an unsuccessful bid for Congress. He is limited by city law from running for a third consecutive term.
Mr. Deutsch agreed to the plea deal on March 26; news of the charges was revealed on Thursday when he was charged and pleaded guilty before Magistrate Judge James L. Cott.
“New York City Council member Chaim Deutsch admitted today that he defrauded the I.R.S. in connection with his real estate business,” Audrey Strauss, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement. “As an elected official and community leader, Deutsch had a particular responsibility to follow the law. Instead, over a multiyear period, Deutsch concealed his true business income to avoid paying his fair share of taxes.”
According to Ms. Strauss’s office, Mr. Deutsch, 52, filed a false personal tax return for the year 2015 that included fraudulent information about business expenses related to Chasa Management, a firm that he solely owned. From 2013 to 2015, Mr. Deutsch failed to pay $82,076 in federal taxes, according to federal prosecutors.
City Council members were barred from earning outside income starting in January 2017 as part of a package of reforms to raise their salaries.
“It is dispiriting when a sitting City Council member is convicted of a crime,” said Margaret Garnett, commissioner of the city’s Department of Investigation. “Rather than set an example of integrity and fidelity to the rule of law, this city councilman’s actions placed personal advantage over the public interest, and undermined public trust in elected officials.”

Source: New York Times

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