In 2005, the New York Times reported that 10 years earlier, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, looking into reports of corruption in boxing, played audio and videotapes growing out of a 1980 FBI investigation.
On one tape presented by ex-FBI agent Joseph Spinelli, Sharpton is seen meeting with an undercover agent posing as drug kingpin and reputed gangster Danny Pagano, discussing ways of approaching boxing promoter Don King to arrange bouts and launder money, The Times reported.
At the same committee hearing, Michael Franzese, a former Colombo family Mafia captain who became a government snitch, testified that he’d used Sharpton to get close to King, adding: ”I knew Sharpton and was aware that he was associated with people in the Genovese family, in particular with family soldier Danny Pagano.”
Sharpton sharply denied it, The Times reported.
In a 2001 opinion piece in USA Today, columnist DeWayne Wickham wrote: “For sure, this one-time child preacher (he was ordained at 10) once was an FBI informant who helped the feds jail some drug dealers and mobsters.”
“Newsday reported in 1988 that Sharpton also supplied federal prosecutors with information on several New York-area black politicians and boxing promoter Don King, a charge Sharpton strongly has denied,” Wickham wrote.
President Obama is expected to be the featured speaker at a meeting later this week of Sharpton’s National Action Network meeting in New York, the New York Post reported.
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