Four years ago, The Inquirer began digging into a little-known South Philadelphia charity.
The paper reported that the charity was flush with millions of dollars in donations and that State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo, its main backer, refused to say where the money had come from.
The paper solved the mystery. In December 2003, it disclosed that Fumo and Peco Energy had a secret deal under which the utility gave $17 million to the Citizens' Alliance for Better Neighborhoods.
The disclosure helped spur the federal investigation that led yesterday to Fumo's indictment.
The indictment makes it plain that both Fumo and prosecutors were paying attention to the paper's reporting.
In an 2005 e-mail cited in the indictment, Fumo wrote that he had no one to drive his daughter to doctors' appointments.
"Since the Inquirer and the feds are all over my ass, I want to keep the use of the staff for these things at an absolute minimum," Fumo wrote.
In the view of prosecutors, Fumo's concern was too little, too late. A grand jury yesterday charged him with misusing the staff of the state Senate and of Citizens Alliance.
As early as 1999, Fumo was concerned that news not leak out about how Citizens' Alliance had gotten its money.
"The Inquirer will go absolutely BALLISTIC if they ever really find out about" the charity's funding. Fumo said in an e-mail. "We really don't need a never-ending series of bull- from them on their next Pulitzer quest!"
In a series of articles, the paper also investigated the Independence Seaport Museum. The indictment charged Fumo with defrauding the museum by cruising for free on luxury yachts provided by the museum.
The last such cruise took place in 2003, the indictment said, "before exposure in The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2004 and the commencement of a federal investigation brought Fumo's scheme to defraud to an end."
