Massive Corruption Arrests in New Jersey

These were arrests on a massive scale.

Amongst those taken into custody by the FBI were city mayors,

politicians and religious leaders.

The authorities needed buses to cope with the sheer scale of the operation.

New Jersey's corruption problem is one of the worst,

if not the worst, in the nation.

Corruption is not only pervasive,

it has become ingrained in New Jersey's political culture.

It's thought that religious charities

controlled by prominent rabbis were used to launder cash.

The arrests were part of a ten year operation that uncovered money laundering on an

international scale,

as well as corruption and the sale of human organs in the US,

Switzerland and Israel.

The list of people we arrested sounds like it should be the roster for a meeting of

community leaders. But sadly, they weren't meeting in a boardroom this morning,

they were in the FBI booking room.

Prosecutors say one rabbi was dealing in human kidneys for transplant for a decade,

buying them from vulnerable people at a huge profit.

The scale of the corruption across New Jersey has outraged residents.

It just goes back to the belief that Hudson County is incredibly corrupt.

And I thought we were making headway and becoming less corrupt.

The number of arrests was remarkable even for New Jersey,

where more than 130 public officials have pleaded guilty or been convicted

of corruption in the last ten years.