New York|Firms With Checkered Pasts Tied to Troubled Midtown Construction Project

A company responsible for oversight at the Manhattan building project now under investigation for structural failures was founded by — and has remained closely entangled with — a former city official who resigned in disgrace and was later convicted of bribery, records and interviews show.

The former official, Ronald Lattanzio, served as an assistant commissioner at the Buildings Department in the 1980s before resigning amid accusations that he and his co-workers threw cocaine-fueled parties in his office.

Later, in the private sector, he pleaded guilty to bribery in 1998 and became a cooperating witness, testifying at a corruption trial in 2001 that he gave gifts to a city councilman and held fund-raisers for him. In exchange, Mr. Lattanzio told the jury, the councilman made phone calls on his behalf, “getting things to move forward” in the city bureaucracy.

At the Midtown site, at 235 East 42nd Street, the company Mr. Lattanzio created, Domani Inspection Services, was tasked with ensuring that structural alterations and other major work were carried out correctly as contractors transformed the building from office space into apartments.

The Manhattan district attorney and the city’s Department of Investigation have opened a preliminary criminal inquiry into what caused columns inside the building to buckle last week in an incident that caused panic and mass evacuations. Spokeswomen for both agencies declined to comment.

After examining structural drawings and photographs, engineers not involved with the project told The New York Times that two columns that failed on the building’s 21st floor did not appear to be properly reinforced with steel plates. A representative of GACE Consulting Engineers, the structural engineer on the project, said its drawings did call for the columns to be given additional support but the work had not been done.