Conflicts of interest. A pattern of favoritism. Special relationships.
Long before Geno Marconi was placed on leave from his post as the state’s director of Ports and Harbors — and before he and his wife, a New Hampshire Supreme Court justice, were indicted on criminal charges — Marconi was accused of rampant mismanagement at Rye Harbor.
The allegations are laid out in a 2022 letter written by Neil Levesque, who serves on the Pease Development Authority’s board of directors, which oversees the state’s ports. Much of the four-page letter centers on Levesque’s concerns that Marconi was unfairly targeting a lobster restaurant based in Rye Harbor and that he and his staff showed favoritism towards the owners of a whale watch outfitter based there as well.
Levesque’s letter — the contents of which are reported publicly for the first time here — raises other concerns about Marconi’s handling of the port, ranging from allowing an unlicensed lobster vendor to set up shop on the state-owned pier, to the disposal of household trash in a state dumpster. Levesque also calls attention to threats that were allegedly being made by a harbor regular.
Levesque addressed these concerns in the May 2022 letter to Paul Brean, the Pease Development Authority’s executive director, concluding with a call for an investigation: “Rye Harbor is owned by the people of New Hampshire and it needs to be cleaned up and done so in a transparent manner,” Levesque wrote.
In September 2022, after the allegations were presented to Marconi, he responded with his own letter to the Pease Board of Directors, in which he defended his actions in a point-by-point rebuttal. He alleged Levesque’s accusations “have seriously affected the moral (sic) of the Division staff.” He also accused Levesque of discrimination for referencing a decades-old drive-by shooting in Rye.
“What is he suggesting here? Is he alluding to my Italian lineage and suggesting that I am running some ‘Mafioso’ crime organization at Rye Harbor?” Marconi wrote.
It’s unclear whether Levesque’s allegations resulted in any immediate disciplinary actions against Marconi by the PDA. But the dueling memos — saturated in details from the day-to-day operations of a working harborfront — do appear to shed new light on what led to the criminal charges against Marconi, filed nearly two years later. According to grand jury indictments, in April 2024, Marconi illegally accessed and shared some of Levesque’s motor vehicle records in what prosecutors say was an act of “retaliation.” Prosecutors have, to date, not said what they think that retaliation may have stemmed from.
Along with charges related to sharing Levesque’s confidential records, Marconi is also accused of erasing voicemails shortly after the Pease Development Authority placed him on administrative leave. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Marconi’s wife, Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi, is also facing indictments after she allegedly spoke with former Gov. Chris Sununu and Steve Duprey, the Pease board chair, in an alleged effort to influence the investigation into her husband during the spring of 2024. Hantz Marconi has also pleaded not guilty.
(Duprey is also a member of NHPR’s Board of Directors, but has no influence or input over the station’s coverage.)
Last month, the owners of the lobster shack Geno Marconi allegedly targeted, filed their own civil suit, accusing both Marconi and the Pease Development Authority of repeated acts of extortion and intimidation, as well as the imposition of an illegal tax on their sales.
That restaurant — the Rye Harbor Lobster Pound — is also at the heart of Levesque’s memo.
Unwarranted scrutiny, and unlocked dumpsters
During the height of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, Rye Harbor Lobster Pound enjoyed a wave of customers. The crowds led to snarled parking at Rye Harbor, which along with serving as a working port, is home to around a dozen waterfront-related businesses that operate out of quaint shacks.
According to Levesque’s memo, Marconi and his staff “dedicated an exorbitant amount of time documenting” complaints against Rye Harbor Lobster Pound, in what Levesque suggests was an effort to gather evidence that could be used to end the restaurant’s lease with the Pease Development Authority. Levesque notes that Marconi’s actions would have benefited the only other food vendor at the harbor: the Granite State Whale Watch, which offers a far more limited menu of offerings.
“The Division of Ports and Harbors has put in place a power system at Rye Harbor that allows for some to operate without the scrutiny that Rye Harbor Lobster Pound has endured,” Levesque wrote.
The Rye Harbor Lobster Pound’s recently filed civil lawsuit makes similar allegations against Marconi.
Marconi, for his part, defended his actions in his rebuttal memo, noting that the lobster pound appeared to be violating its lease by expanding its menu offerings beyond just lobster rolls and that he instructed his staff to monitor parking issues as a way to document the conditions within Rye Harbor.
In addition to raising concerns about Marconi’s treatment of the restaurant’s owners, Levesque also made a series of other allegations in his memo, including:
- Rye Harbor tenants and patrons improperly disposing of household trash in a state dumpster
- Concerns about a lobsterman with no active mooring permit selling his catch on the pier for two summers with no enforcement
- Claims that Marconi was ignoring or minimizing an incident of criminal threatening involving someone described as a former user of Rye Harbor
Marconi’s memo included a point-by-point response to these claims.
Regarding the dumpster, he notes that when the Ports Division had previously locked the dumpster, “trash was left on the ground where the seagulls attacked the bags.”
He defended the sale of lobsters off the pier, noting that there is a long history of fishermen selling catch “off the boat.”
Marconi also defended his handling of the criminal threatening allegation, saying he spoke with both the Rye police chief as well as a state trooper who keeps a boat moored at the harbor.
Marconi concludes his letter by addressing a series of newspaper articles that he said Levesque included in his 2022 memo. Those articles detail a shooting incident in 2007 involving a longshoreman. There were no injuries, and no arrests made in the incident. According to Marconi, he was investigated and cleared of any involvement in the event by New Hampshire State Police. He writes “I find this most troubling of all Director Levesque’s allegations.”
Memos spur outside investigation
As part of the criminal case against Marconi, prosecutors amassed more than 20,000 pages of documents that have now been shared with his defense attorneys. It isn’t clear if the dueling memos are part of those materials, or if they will be introduced as evidence in his criminal trial, which has not yet been scheduled.
Levesque’s memo was initially only shared with Brean, the executive director of the Pease Development Authority, as well as the agency’s attorney, and with Duprey, Pease’s board chair.
According to the transcript of an interview, Duprey gave to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office as part of the investigation into Hantz Marconi, Levesque’s memo was then shared with Marconi by the Pease Development Authority’s human resources department.
In that interview, Duprey said that both he and Levesque were unhappy to learn that Levesque’s memo, which was intended as a confidential document, had since been shared outside of Pease, and that he had concerns about who may have seen it.
Hantz Marconi, in her April 2024 phone call with Duprey, told him she believed Levesque “is the one who stirred this up,” referring to the attorney general’s investigation into her husband, according to the transcript.
In 2022, the Pease Development Authority hired an outside law firm to investigate Levesque’s claims, according to Duprey. He told investigators the resulting document was less than satisfactory from his perspective. “I mean, it was complete — frankly, I hope we didn’t spend much money ‘cause it was a complete bullsh-t report,” Duprey told investigators, according to a transcript of his interview.
NHPR has requested a copy of the outside review from the Pease Development Authority but has not yet received a response.
This story was originally published by NHPR. It was shared as part of the New England News Collaborative.
