When the U.S. attorney’s corruption case targeting Los Angeles City Hall first broke into view, much of the public’s attention focused on vivid descriptions of cash bribes, escort services and lavish trips to Las Vegas.
But as the investigation has unspooled over the past year, federal prosecutors have laid out another, less sensational set of allegations: That a deputy mayor-turned-real estate consultant worked to arrange “indirect bribes” for city officials by routing the money through those officials’family members.
Prosecutors brought an indictment alleging that former Deputy Mayor Raymond Chan, while working for downtown developers, set up a job for the family member of a city commissioner; had his companyhire a relative of a City Council aide; and proposed a fake consulting contract with another city staffer’s mother.
Such job offers, even modest ones, were a way of greasing the wheels of the city bureaucracy, prosecutors allege.
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