PROVIDENCE — In a report released Tuesday, Attorney General Peter F. Neronha concluded that Gov. Daniel J. McKee violated procurement rules in directing a multimillion-dollar state contract to a new firm with ties to McKee, but found , also that there is insufficient evidence to file a criminal charge of bribery against the governor.

The long-awaited report stems from an investigation into a controversial contract worth up to $5.17 million that the McKee administration awarded ILO Groupconsulting firm that was formed two days ago McKee took office in 2021.

“The governor and his administration did not follow state procurement rules and regulations — the evidence is clear and cannot be seriously challenged,” and McKee ignored the findings of a state review team, prosecutors said.

But the attorney general’s office doesn’t enforce government procurement rules — it determines whether crimes have been committed, Neronha’s report said. In that case, too, investigators were looking into whether awarding the IOM contract violated the state’s bribery statute.

“At the end of the day, in order to file a criminal bribery case, this office needs clear evidence, beyond inference and conjecture, that Governor McKee awarded the state contract to IOM in exchange for a direct personal benefit to the governor,” they wrote the prosecutors. . “The evidence developed here does not establish that point beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The ILO’s lawyer, former U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente, issued a statement on Tuesday, saying: “The Attorney General’s report confirmed what we have maintained from the beginning: There was absolutely no wrongdoing by the ILO Group or any of its staff . We are pleased that this matter has come to an end and the ILO Group looks forward to continuing its work in support of public education at the national level.”

Prosecutors said the key question was whether McKee steered that federally funded multimillion-dollar state contract to Julia Rafal-Baer’s ILO Group instead of Chiefs for Change — a group led by Rafal-Baer and McKee’s close associate Michael C. Magee – paying national public affairs firm SKDK to provide services to McKee.

Magee is a longtime informal adviser and supporter of McKee, a Democrat who championed charter schools known as “primary academies” when he was mayor of Cumberland, the report said. They worked together on Rhode Island’s primary academies and the Cumberland Office of Children, Youth and Learning.

In 2021, Magee was CEO of Chiefs for Change, a nonprofit education network of state and district education system leaders, the report said. Rafal-Baer was chief operating officer of Chiefs for Change and was close to Magee. Chiefs for Change worked with SKDK on education-related projects in Rhode Island in 2020.

The investigation concluded that McKee took steps to ensure that a “School Reopening Contract” would be awarded to IOM against the findings of state contracting authorities and that he accepted communications services from SKDK that he did not pay for, they wrote to the prosecutor. “This is clear from the evidence and cannot be seriously disputed,” they said.

But to convict McKee of accepting a bribe, prosecutors must establish a “quid pro quo” — an exchange of this for that — between the person offering the bribe and the public official, prosecutors wrote. And the investigation did not find enough evidence to prove such a quid pro quo beyond a reasonable doubt, they said.

“There were no explicit or implicit references in the communications (emails, text messages) we reviewed or in the information provided during interviews with multiple witnesses that such an arrangement was in place,” prosecutors wrote.

The report said the prosecution of a bribery charge “should be based on a plethora of circumstantial evidence and inferences related to the award of the contract to IOM and the receipt of SKDK’s services. That is insufficient to meet our heavy burden of proof – beyond a reasonable doubt – in a criminal case.”

Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at [email protected]. Follow L @FitzProv. Steph Machado can be reached at [email protected]. Follow a @StephMachado.