According to multiple news outlets (including Crain’s and The Wall Street Journal), Marc Jacobs International paid $1 million to settle allegations that it used bribery to snag preferential booking during New York Fashion Week from the former superintendent of the 69th Regiment Armory, James Jackson.
Almost 10 months after the story broke, the New York Attorney General’s office announced yesterday that Jackson pled guilty to larceny and bribery for demanding payments from Jacobs for more than eight years. Jacobs has not commented on the announcement, but his firm issued a statement today acknowledging that it paid $1 million in a civil settlement back in February: “We have already taken and will continue to take steps to avoid incidents of this nature in the future."
What are those steps? The company also agreed to hire a private monitoring agency for the next two years to review operations and maintain full disclosure with Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, as the settlement stipulated. KCD Worldwide, the firm that planned Jacobs’ fashion shows, was also involved in the allegations, but it has yet to issue a statement and could not be reached for comment.
