2 Chicago lawmakers had desks at crooked contractor

2 Chicago lawmakers had desks at crooked contractor


BY TIM NOVAK AND NATASHA KORECKI



Staff Reporters



tnovak@suntimes.com



Last Modified: Jun 12, 2012 02:11AM

Two of the most powerful legislators in Springfield ran their private businesses out of the offices of a crooked government contractor, according to documents obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.



State Rep. Edward Acevedo and state Sen. Tony Munoz won’t say why they had desks and computers for their businesses in the Southwest Side offices of Azteca Supply Co., whose owner and her husband await sentencing in a minority-contract fraud scheme.



The two Chicago Democrats — who each hold the title of assistant majority leader in the Illinois Legislature — have never listed the 4500 S. Kolin Ave. address on any business filings with the state of Illinois. Nor have they reported any business ties to Azteca on the financial disclosure forms that they are required to file each year with the legislature.



But an Azteca employee-turned-government-informant told the FBI that Acevedo and Munoz kept the desks and computers for their businesses at Azteca’s offices, according to a recently unsealed search warrant that led to the indictment and convictions of Azteca president Aurora Venegas and her husband, Thomas Masen.





The informant told federal investigators that the two lawmakers “acted as consultants/lobbyists” for the crooked contractor, according to a sworn statement FBI Special Agent Julia E. Meredith wrote to obtain the search warrant for the July 17, 2008, FBI raid on the offices of Azteca, which got millions of dollars in work from the city of Chicago and was the largest female-owned subcontractor on Mayor Richard M. Daley’s O’Hare Modernization Project.

FBI agents searched Azteca’s desks, computers, credenzas, file cabinets and vehicles, but they did not search the two desks and computers belonging to Acevedo and Munoz, according to the records, which had been kept under seal since 2008.



The FBI didn’t search the legislators’ desks or computers because they were “not believed to maintain business records of Azteca,” Meredith wrote.“These computers will not be searched or seized.”



Asked why the FBI didn’t seize the legislators’ computers four years ago, FBI spokeswoman Joan Hyde says investigators “did not have probable cause to be looking” at the two men’s computers nearly four years ago.





“It was an Azteca Supply issue,” Hyde says of the search.



Acevedo wouldn’t talk with a Sun-Times reporter seeking comment. Munoz didn’t return messages left for him.



Neither has been charged with any wrongdoing.





Acevedo and Munoz are both 48 and both are cops on leave from the Chicago Police Department while serving in the Illinois Legislature. Both men were leaders of Daley’s now-defunct Hispanic Democratic Organization.

Venegas and her company had given money in the past to both politicians’ campaign funds. Munoz got $10,470. Acevedo got $1,050, and Venegas also hosted campaign fund-raisers for him.





Venegas falsely represented that she owned and ran Azteca giving the company a leg up on obtaining government contracts set aside for businesses owned and operated by women, according to federal prosecutors and City Hall’s inspector general. Her husband admitted lying to the FBI about his role in the company.

Azteca did little if any work, acting instead as a “pass-through” for other companies that used them to meet government requirements to include minority- and women-owned subcontractors.





Prosecutors initially accused Azteca of fraudulently receiving more than $9.5 million tied to contracts between 2001 and 2008.

Venegas, 63, pleaded guilty last year to a charge involving a $57,000 landscaping contract with the village of Orland Park. Masen, 67, pleaded guilty to lying to federal authorities when he denied he was helping his wife run a phony woman-owned business to win government contracts, with other companies actually doing the work.



Azteca had other government deals to provide everything from concrete pipes at O’Hare Airport to chemicals to treat Chicago’s drinking water, as well as deals to dispose of feminine-hygiene products at O’Hare and work on the reconstruction of the Dan Ryan Expressway.





Azteca let Acevedo and Munoz “use a portion of its office space to operate their consulting businesses,” according to the FBI search warrant, which doesn’t say whether they paid rent.

Azteca leased the space in the office and warehouse building on South Kolin from developer Calvin Boender, who has since gone to prison for bribing then-Ald. Isaac Carothers (29th).



Venegas gave Munoz a desk to operate his company, Urban Risk Management & Consulting Services Inc.



Acevedo used his desk to operate his company, Vallarta Consulting Group, according to the search warrant. When the FBI raided the offices on South Kolin, there were two names on the door — Azteca Supply Co. and Vallarta Consulting Group.



Acevedo listed himself as president of Vallarta on his most recent legislative financial disclosure statement, filed last year. He didn’t say what Vallarta does.



Vallarta’s current address is listed as the South Loop condo of attorney Meribeth Mermall, who founded the company in December 2003 while working as an assistant Cook County state’s attorney.



Mermall, who now works as a lobbyist for Commonwealth Edison, is also a manager of Vallarta, according to state records. Her daughter works for Acevedo’s legislative office, according to the daughter’s Facebook page.



Mermall, 53, did not return messages.



Acevedo wrote a letter on his official state letterhead on Sept. 12, 2006, encouraging City Hall to certify Venegas and her company as a woman-owned business,



“She is one of the finest, most well-rounded individuals I know,” Acevedo wrote, singling out “Aurora’s ethics and willingness to go one step farther.”





At the time he wrote that letter, Acevedo was suing the city, claiming that his civil rights were violated by a fellow Chicago police officer who arrested the lawmaker during a scuffle at an auto pound in August 2001. City Hall paid a private law firm $132,363 to fight Acevedo’s suit, which was thrown out by judge, reinstated by the appeals court and then rejected by a federal jury in September 2007.
http://www.suntimes.com/12974435-761/2-chicago-lawmakers-had-desks-at-crooked-contractor.html