Federal agents were at the Community Renewal Team headquarters at 555 Windsor Street in Hartford Thursday, executing a search warrant as part of an investigation into alleged financial improprieties at the regional anti-poverty agency.

About 20 agents appeared to be entering the building Thursday morning to seize records. According to Community Renewal Team spokesperson Nancy Pappas, the agents responding were from the Health and Human Services Administration.

The search warrants are focused on the former Home Solutions program, said Pappas. The program, which helped homeowners with home improvement projects they couldn't afford, ended two years ago because of a lack of state bonding money, she said.

Poverty Head Start Windsor (Hartford, Connecticut) U.S. Army

Pappas said the agents' search for information is mostly focused on the third floor of the CRT's Windsor Street offices. Some employees were driven elsewhere to work, others moved to the second floor, she said.

Comment from the Health and Human Services Administration was not immediately available. Pappas said that the matter did not involve a criminal aspect, and added that the organization would cooperate fully.

Allegations of irregularities and improprieties inside the agency first surfaced after a top administrator was forced out. CRT annually handles tens of millions of dollars in state and federal grants.

State Auditors Robert Ward and John Geragosian spent months investigating a complaint filed last April by a "whistleblower" about alleged misuse of grant funds by CRT. They had referred it to state Attorney General George Jepsen for review in late September.

The probe began after Trish Donovan, a former U.S. Army major who served as CRT's $100,000-plus chief operating officer until being forced out, wrote a Jan. 15 letter to the agency's 22-member board of directors, a copy of which was obtained by The Courant.

Donovan wrote that agency CEO and President Lena Rodriguez forced her to quit after accusing her of improper behavior � but she denied any impropriety and alleged that the real reason was retaliation over Donovan's cooperation with a state auditor.

"I believe her behavior to be retaliatory due to the fact that I was required to cooperate and furnish documents to the Auditors in connection with their investigation," Donovan wrote. She also wrote that Rodriguez "chooses to execute her power and authority" by being "abusive, abrasive, degrading and demeaning. � She makes snap judgments with little or no understanding of issues and abdicates ownership if her judgment proves in error."

Donovan's allegations have been denied by Fernando Betancourt, chairman of CRT's board, who responded in behalf of both the agency and Rodriguez.

"The bottom line is that Ms. Donovan's letter is nothing more than the views of a disgruntled former employee who resigned after confirming that she had taken inappropriate action which placed the agency at risk," he wrote in a letter to The Courant.

Betancourt wrote that Donovan quit after being confronted over having let a resigning CRT employee stay on the payroll through the end of last month � "for the express purpose" of allowing him to tell his home refinancing company that he "was still employed at CRT," even though that wasn't going to be true by the time he refinanced his house.

The Donovan controversy threatens to again train a public focus on the finances of the agency that calls itself "the largest non-profit provider of human services in Connecticut."

In 2005, federal auditors said that CRT's top salaries, including more than $300,000 in annual pay and fringe benefits in 2002 for then-CEO Paul C. Puzzo, were too much for an agency that runs Head Start preschool programs.

Puzzo stepped down as CEO in late 2005 but stayed on in a new position of vice president for business development and community affairs, which the agency said at the time would pay him $85,000 annually. But a recent report to the IRS for the year 2009 shows he was paid a $102,793 salary, plus $33,738 in "other compensation."

The Courant reported in February that in recent years Puzzo has received more than $100,000 in annual compensation as vice president of business development and community affairs but he rarely appears at the office, and doesn't have a desk there.