Providence got subpoena for City Council President’s payroll records

The city of Providence complied with a subpoena request for payroll records belonging to City Council President Luis Aponte back on March 10th.

Though we don’t know what the grand jury investigation is about, we do know Aponte is under investigation by the Attorney General’s Office for possible campaign finance violations.

This is what the city council President had to say to ABC 6 on that subject back in October.

"I think the opposite. I came to them with what I thought were some issues and worked with them to try and resolve those,” said Aponte in October.

At that time, two different issues were recently made public. The first, outstanding late filing penalties totaling nearly $48,000 and the second, the personal use of campaign funds.

A previously obtained report shows the Council President repeatedly used campaign funds to cover every day expenses ranging from liquor store purchases to Netflix to ITunes and Stop and Shop.

When that news broke Aponte’s attorney said all funds had been reimbursed and they pro-actively approached the Board of Elections about the issue.

After news of the March subpoena broke on Wednesday Aponte’s attorney declined to comment.

We tried to reach out to Aponte. He answered and then hung up. Follow up calls were not answered.

State Police did confirm its detectives are also investigating the Providence politician.

We should also note, on a separate issue, back in January the Rhode Island Ethics Commission said Aponte voted on zoning changes directly impacting a business associate.

The Attorney General’s office had no comment about the news of the subpoena.

(C) WLNE 2017