ORLANDO, Fla. -- Orange County has barred a top manager from this week’s evaluation of a massive convention center food contract after Local 6 revealed his wife’s business was paid more than $100,000 by the current food concessionaire, whose majority partner is seeking to retain the deal.

Meanwhile, the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority is auditing another food concession controlled by the same man who manages the current convention center partnership, after Local 6 revealed that company misstated the airport’s share of profits.

Both public agencies acted in response to a monthslong Local 6 investigation of some of the most valuable tourism food contracts in the nation.

At the center of both probes is Tyrone Nabbie, a Windermere man who over three decades has risen from dishwasher to Central Florida’s king of concession contracts, reaping a sizeable cut of $70 million spent each year on food and drink at the convention center, airport, Orlando venues, county jail and state facilities.

Last week, Orange County prevented its business development manager and his staff from judging proposals -- including one headed by Nabbie’s current partner, Levy Restaurants -- for the largest contract of its kind in county history: the right to sell what could amount to $300 million in food at the Orange County Convention Center over 10 years.

The move came after Local 6 informed the county that the Levy convention center venture -- which Nabbie manages and has a 15-percent interest in -- has paid at least $105,000 to a bottled-water business owned by the wife of county business development manager FitzHugh Long.

“I think it’s appropriate (Long) and his staff be suspended from any involvement in this process until we get this investigation finished,” County Mayor Rich Crotty told Local 6 Thursday, after being presented with our findings.

Also part of the investigation: an $11.3 million county jail food contract Nabbie won with Long’s help in the fall of 2006, a time when Long’s wife’s water company was being paid nearly $28,000 by Nabbie’s convention center venture.

Asked if Long should have sat on the procurement committee that rated Nabbie’s jail food venture, Crotty answered, “Knowing what we know now from your investigation, absolutely not.”

And the scrutiny of Nabbie’s dealings does not end there.

Last month, GOAA informed Nabbie it would audit one of his companies, DanFine Corporation, after Local 6 found it misstated the airport’s share of profits in an audited financial statement. (For more revelations on the airport matter, watch Local 6 news Tuesday at 11 p.m.)

THE COUNTY CONNECTION

The county’s investigation comes as a procurement committee prepares to meet on Wednesday to rate three proposals for the next convention center contract.

Nabbie’s convention center partners -- Levy Restaurants, with 65 percent of the current partnership, and local restaurateur Johnny Rivers, with 20 percent -- are vying to retain the deal, though Nabbie is not part of their new partnership or of the two other competing proposals.

Long was slated to be on the procurement committee, until we showed county officials public records documenting his wife’s dealings with Nabbie at both the convention center and airport.

Crotty said the documentation “gives an appearance, at least, that something inappropriate may have taken place. … I’ve instructed the county administrator to do an in-depth investigation and then report back to me … and then we’re going to take appropriate action.”

One key issue: Did Long’s actions create a conflict of interest or violate other county policies?

Long told Local 6 he did nothing wrong.

“I don’t have anything to do with my wife’s business,” he said, adding he did know she sold water to the convention center food partnership. “They just called her up to buy water.”

In fact, our investigation found, Levy Restaurants’ convention center venture apparently called quite a bit.

Levy was the top customer for Inez Long’s bottled-water company in 2003, generating $77,392 in revenues -- 47 percent of her company’s annual total, according to records her company filed with the county business development office her husband heads.

The company, Corlee Water Corporation, also charged Levy’s convention center operation 20 percent more per case than it did another customer who was buying one-tenth the volume of water in 2001, according to invoices Corlee filed with the City of Orlando.

If Levy’s convention center venture overpaid for water, “at the end of the day the customer that paid too much gets hurt -- and that's us,” Crotty said, because the county is supposed to get 85 percent of profits from the contract.

“It appears in the documents you are showing me there was not a discount given for volume; in fact, it's quite the opposite,” Crotty said, adding, “That really rises to the level of having to investigate this more thoroughly.”

After refusing to comment for a week, Inez Long told Local 6 Monday night that she may have charged the convention center more because she provides the service on demand, as opposed to through a contract.

She also said the other customer, an airport gift shop, may give her water brand valuable exposure and not produce the delivery expense she incurs trucking water to the convention center.

FitzHugh Long, asked why his wife would charge a high-volume customer 20 percent more than a much smaller customer, said, “I would doubt that that’s the case. … I don’t think (Nabbie) would want to do that if he was trying to maximize his profits.”

After trying in vain for weeks to schedule an interview with Nabbie, Local 6 tracked him down on a Winter Park sidewalk on October 11 and asked him, “Were you paying a premium for that water, more than they would charge lesser customers?”

“Whatever we do we do competitively, and that’s it,” Nabbie said.

Informed Corlee billed him 20 percent more that it did a smaller customer, Nabbie replied, “I can’t recall right now. I’d have to take a look at it. I know we have a fair process.”

PIECE OF THE PIE

One thing both the airport’s audit and Orange County’s investigation have in common: Tyrone Nabbie, the 49-year-old Bahamian-born success story, a former dishwasher who now shares a huge piece of the Central Florida concession pie, earning a chunk of almost every major state and local food contract here.

Based on our review of public records, Nabbie’s companies have an average 23-percent interest in four Central Florida food contracts grossing $48 million a year. They share an unknown stake in $21 million a year more in state and local contracts teamed with Levy or its parent company, Compass Group, the largest food supplier in the world.

For now, the current airport audit and county investigation are confined, respectively, to Nabbie’s airport company and the actions of Long, the county employee; neither Levy nor any other Compass Group company is a target of those investigations.

Nabbie became managing partner of and got his 15-percent stake in the convention center venture one month after Levy won the contract in 1998, once Nabbie left his job as general manager for the center’s previous contract-holder, a Levy rival.

Now Levy is seeking renewal of the convention center deal without Nabbie’s involvement, but company officials won’t say why. Levy Restaurants refuses to comment to us about Nabbie or anything else.

During a convention center tour for prospective contractors on September 26, Local 6 asked Shawn Beard, Levy’s regional director, how he would describe his partnership with Nabbie and whether it would continue.

“You don’t have any problems with him, obviously?” we asked.

His response: “We’re glad to be here at the Orange County Convention Center because it’s a great facility and we’re glad to be a part of it and look forward to being here in the future.”

We asked: “With Mr. Nabbie?”

“We’re glad to be here at the Orange County Convention Center …” he repeated, refusing to address our questions.

Levy and Compass Group – a $20 billion British conglomerate – have teamed with Nabbie on contracts that have grossed about $200 million in Florida since 2001, according to information on Nabbie’s company website and in public records.

One of those deals, we found, came with the help of FitzHugh Long, the county official whose wife’s bottled-water company was doing business with Nabbie’s convention center concession.

COUNTY CONFLICTS

As business development manager since 1996, FitzHugh Long, 51, has established incentives for large companies to include minority-owned companies – like his wife’s and Nabbie’s -- in their county contracts. And taxpayers pay him $89,315 this year to do it.

In October 2006, Nabbie and another Compass Group company, Trinity Services Group, won an $11.3-million, three-year renewal of their Orange County jail concession, after FitzHugh Long – sitting on the county procurement committee – gave their venture his highest marks.

In the three months beginning October 2006, Nabbie’s convention center venture paid Corlee $27,793; over the subsequent six months, it paid Corlee $3,936, according to county records.

Long said he did not think he needed to declare a conflict of interest or to reveal his wife’s connection to Nabbie because Corlee was not doing business directly with the jail venture, in which Nabbie’s company holds a 24-percent interest, according to county records.

But County Mayor Crotty said Long should not have judged the jail venture, saying it presented at least the appearance of a conflict of interest. As they often do, the procurement committee rating jail bidders in 2006 reached a consensus on its scores -- so, in the end, Long’s numbers wound up identical to the other judges’. And the Nabbie-Compass venture underbid its competitor, so the county commission’s decision to choose Nabbie’s venture was no surprise.

But the record is clear: Corlee Water was providing Nabbie’s convention center venture water while the owner’s husband helped Nabbie win a multimillion-dollar bid.

CARRYING WATER

Corlee Water Corp. is based in the back of a business park off South Orange Avenue, two company panel trucks often parked outside. One is loaded with empty five-gallon water jugs visible through a decaying back door.

Between 2000 (when it was incorporated) and 2004 (the last year for which public records are available), Corlee’s gross annual revenues ranged from around $10,000 to more than $160,000.

Its sole owner is Inez Long, 51, president of the Black Business Investment Fund of Central Florida, a non-profit corporation that helps minority businesses build management capacity and access capital, partly through loans and loan guarantees. She was also a board member of the Orlando-Orange County Expressway Authority from 1993-2001.

She and Nabbie have declined to reveal how much business they did.

So, without internal company records, Local 6 can reveal only what’s on the public record:

In June 2000, as Corlee sought certification as a women- and minority-owned business, Nabbie wrote a letter to Inez Long committing his airport venture to buy 100 cases of bottled water a month from Corlee;

In 2001, Corlee charged the convention center joint venture 20 percent more per case for 120 cases of water than it did a gift shop owner buying 12 cases;

In 2003, Corlee reported $77,392 in revenues -- nearly half its total -- came from Levy Restaurants;

Between October 1, 2006 and June 30, 2007, the convention center venture paid Corlee $31,730.

But there is no comprehensive public record of how much Nabbie’s partnerships paid Corlee, when they paid it or what they received in return. Nor is there public evidence that his ventures sought competitive bids from water vendors.

Those documents, if they exist, belong to the joint ventures, which refuse to give Local 6 access.

But they could be demanded by the county or GOAA.

FAMILY TIE

While Inez Long won’t say what Nabbie’s ventures paid her, we do know Orange County paid Corlee Water $135,413 between 2002 and 2005, part of a problem-plagued contract Corlee won without having to disclose its owner’s marriage to a top county manager.

Orange County’s code prohibits employees “engaged in the procurement of goods” from having any financial “or personal beneficial interest, directly or indirectly” in any county contract.

County purchasing chief Johnny Richardson said FitzHugh Long is often engaged in the procurement of goods, both as a rotating member of procurement committees and as business development manager, seeking to encourage minority- and women-owned businesses to share in county contracts.

Crotty said the county’s investigation will seek to determine whether Long -- through his wife -- had any “personal beneficial interest, directly or indirectly” in Corlee’s county contract.

The contract required bidders to “disclose with their bid the name of any officer, director or agent who is also an employee of Orange County.”

But, since Inez Long owns 100 percent of Corlee and is its sole officer and director, the county tells Local 6 it appears neither she nor her husband had to disclose their relationship in the 2002 bid.

FitzHugh Long played no role in Corlee winning the county contract, which it did by bidding $628 a year less than the previous contractor.

But it was not pretty.

Fire stations “ran out of bottled water numerous times” as Corlee was “not delivering water” and “has not responded to numerous phone calls, faxes and emails,” county employees complained. One office “is now without water” and a stockroom “has been without water for months,” said other county offices, adding, “This service is typical of Corlee and unacceptable.”

Even Corlee’s original bid contained math errors that had to be corrected by the county’s purchasing office before it awarded her the work.

Richardson said he doesn’t recall seeing the Corlee bid documents.

But if he had read them he would have learned in 2002 that the wife of the man who works about 50 feet away from him and sits with him on procurement committees, was listing as references Nabbie’s ventures at both the airport and the convention center.

THE MOTHER OF ALL CONCESSIONS

At stake this week: committee ratings for one of the largest food concession contracts around, a deal that could gross $300 million over 10 years.

The Orange County Convention Center is the biggest public works project in county history and the second-largest convention venue in the country, costing $2.8 billion to build, once bonds are paid off in 2032.

And it attracts millions of mouths to feed – at a cost of $28 million last year alone.

That’s what this week’s procurement committee food fight is all about, as County Commissioner Linda Stewart, two convention center officials, a tourism industry leader and deputy county administrator Sharon Donoghue will rate the competing ventures. (No one will replace FitzHugh Long on the committee.) The contenders: Levy Restaurants; Aramark, a Philadelphia-based firm; and Centerplate, of Spartanburg, SC.

Their partnerships with various minority-owned businesses will be scored on several criteria, including experience and references, operational and marketing plans, financial conditions and transition plan.

Price is not an issue in the proposals because the contract terms guarantee the county 10 percent of gross sales, plus 85 percent of profits. But politics could become a factor.

After receiving the committee’s report in several weeks, Crotty and the six elected Orange County Commissioners will ultimately decide who wins the massive deal.

In September, campaign finance reports reveal eight companies tied to Levy, Nabbie and their current convention center partner, Johnny Rivers, delivered $4,000 in campaign contributions to Commissioner Mildred Fernandez’s 2008 re-election campaign. (Centerplate donated $500 to Fernandez.) But, for taxpayers, the bottom line will be profits paid to the county.

Over the last five years, the Levy convention center partnership has paid the county about $23.2 million in profits, plus the $10.8 million constituting 10 percent of sales.

Levy has used its own accountant -- not Nabbie’s -- on the convention center deal and those financial statements have not been called into question. Nor have they ever been audited by the Orange County Comptroller.

FOOD FIGHTS

Controversial food deals are no strangers to Central Florida.

In 1988, longtime airport food concessionaire Champ Williams was convicted of income tax fraud after investigations found he and his family skimmed millions of profits from the airport restaurants they ran since 1962.

And controversy raged in county commission chambers in 1998, when Levy first won the convention center deal.

The board was tied three-three on the matter, with then-commissioner Mable Butler considering whom to support. Butler has not returned telephone messages from Local 6, but those involved in the deal say Levy was able to win her support by, in part, vowing to include Nabbie in the deal -- which it did a month later with the 15-percent share Nabbie retains to this day, according to county records. (The minority-owned business controlled by restaurateur Johnny Rivers, part of Levy’s original joint venture, wound up retaining 20 percent of the deal.)

And another skirmish flared this summer.

Nabbie joined Rivers, McDonald’s franchisee James Gilchrist and the family of the late tourism shop magnate Jesse Maali in Orlando Hometown Partners, a group that lost its bid to take over the concession space one of Nabbie’s airport food companies has occupied since 1998.

In a bitterly fought battle for what could be a $350 million, 15-year contract, Nabbie’s Orlando Hometown Partners venture was bested by Areas/Hojeij, a venture headed by companies from Barcelona, Spain and Atlanta.

Nabbie’s group bid just $19,500 less than the $2.2 million a year Areas/Hojeij agreed to pay for the right to sell in Airside 3, where United, US Airways and others operate. (Nabbie’s company will remain there on a month-to-month basis until Areas/Hojeij takes over sometime before June 2008.)

GOAA, considering fees and other factors, rejected the Nabbie-run Orlando Hometown partnership, prompting its supporters to attack Areas/Hojeij, from questioning its status as a female-owned business to criticizing the cleanliness of one of its local partner’s Orlando restaurants.

But their protests failed.

Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.