David KidwellContact ReporterChicago Tribune
The admitted bagman in a bribery scheme that brought red light cameras to Chicago testified Wednesday that he passed envelopes stuffed with thousands in cash at a time to a city official over the table at Manny's deli, a hot spot for political power lunches.
"It was generally in Manila envelopes," said Martin O'Malley, 75, who told jurors he collected about $2 million in bogus commissions over the decadelong conspiracy. "Sometimes there would be other people there with us, but they couldn't tell what was happening.
"It looked like documentation I was giving him," O'Malley said under questioning from U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon, who is leading the prosecution of John Bills, the former No. 2 official in the city's Department of Transportation.
O'Malley, the first key witness to testify, said he passed $557,000 in cash to Bills during dozens of lunch meetings with his friend at Manny's and other favorite eateries.
He used much of the other money he received from camera vendor Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. to purchase — at Bills' request — a car, a boat, pricey hotel stays, golf outings, plane tickets, meals, even an Arizona condominium.
He said Redflex paid him bogus commissions every time a new camera system was installed in Chicago.
"I put it in the bank, paid taxes on it and gave the rest to John Bills," O'Malley said. "A lot of times he would tell me what he wanted, most usually over the phone.
"Sometimes he would email 'let's get together for lunch and discuss the 8-page speed results,'" O'Malley said. "That indicated to me he wanted $8,000."
The bribery scheme was first disclosed in the Chicago Tribune in 2012 after the newspaper obtained an internal Redflex memo that detailed the plot.
In exchange for the bribes, Bills is charged with steering multimillion-dollar contracts to Redflex, coaching executives, allowing them to help write contract specifications, sabotaging competitors and growing the system to the largest camera network in the country.
Bills' attorney will cross-examine O'Malley when the trial resumes Thursday at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.
According to O'Malley, he met Bills at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on the South Side in 2002. Bills later set him up with a consulting job with Redflex, he said.
O'Malley recalled from the witness stand going to the interview at Redflex headquarters in Phoenix.
"They said they were looking for someone in the $30,000 range," O'Malley testified. "And I said that wasn't me, that I was looking for something more like $60,000.
"They excused themselves for 15 minutes and came back and told me they could work with that."
O'Malley said it was Bills who negotiated for his lucrative commissions based on every new camera system installed.
Fardon spent much of the afternoon showing jurors the email communications, receipts and spreadsheet summaries of all the expenditures O'Malley said he made "at the request of John Bills."
Those included several checks totaling $5,500 to the vaunted 13th Ward political organization of powerful House Speaker Michael Madigan.
Bills rose through the ranks at City Hall as part of Madigan's patronage army, serving as a top precinct captain and fundraiser for the longtime Democratic politician.
Fardon questioned O'Malley about emails he wrote to his bosses at Redflex about meetings Bills had with Madigan and former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley when Redflex was working to expand the red light camera program to include speed cameras.
"Absolutely," O'Malley said about Redflex's interest in speed cameras. "It was a tremendous amount of money."
He said Redflex was working to take care of Bills even after he retired in 2011, by orchestrating work with a Chicago consulting firm it hired to help get the speed camera contract.
"He went to work at Resolute (Consulting)," O'Malley said of Bills. "Resolute ran the campaign for the new mayor, Mayor Emanuel," he testified. "They have good connections to the new mayor, so Redflex decided to hire them to increase their connections to him."
Resolute owner Greg Goldner has acknowledged hiring Bills to work for a Redflex-funded nonprofit organization but has denied any wrongdoing connected with the contract. Goldner has political ties to both Rahm Emanuel and Daley. He was Emanuel's campaign manager in his first run for Congress.
Earlier Wednesday, Bills' attorney, Nishay Sanan, opened his defense by giving jurors a primer on the Chicago Way. He maintained that Bills didn't have the clout to orchestrate a scheme of such magnitude.
"In the city of Chicago, if you are going to bribe someone, you go to an alderman, you go to a president, you go to the mayor," Sanan told jurors in his opening statement. "You go to someone who has the power to do it.
"John Bills did not have the ability, the power, the control, the influence or the leverage to direct that contract to Redflex," he said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Storino told jurors that Bills indeed wielded the power at City Hall to pull off the decadelong conspiracy.
"This is a case about public corruption," Storino said. "It's a case of a high-level city official who had power, who violated the public trust for one reason, and that reason was greed to line his own pockets.
"This case is not about red light cameras, whether or not they are good or bad, whether or not they are effective or ineffective," he said. "It's about a city process that was corrupted and exploited by a greedy public official."
But even as he tried to separate the charges against Bills from jurors' opinions on the unpopular cameras, he also asked that they consider that Bills' scheme resulted in more cameras and more traffic tickets.
"His commission structure was specifically tied to the number of cameras installed around the city," Storino said.
Sanan said the entire case against Bills relies on the jury judging the credibility of O'Malley and two other alleged co-conspirators who are testifying after cutting deals with prosecutors.
"At the end of this case, they will have failed," Sanan said. "Not only will they have failed, but they will have failed miserably because they have to rely on three liars."
dkidwell@tribpub.com
Twitter @DavidKidwell1
"It was generally in Manila envelopes," said Martin O'Malley, 75, who told jurors he collected about $2 million in bogus commissions over the decadelong conspiracy. "Sometimes there would be other people there with us, but they couldn't tell what was happening.
O'Malley, the first key witness to testify, said he passed $557,000 in cash to Bills during dozens of lunch meetings with his friend at Manny's and other favorite eateries.
He used much of the other money he received from camera vendor Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. to purchase — at Bills' request — a car, a boat, pricey hotel stays, golf outings, plane tickets, meals, even an Arizona condominium.
He said Redflex paid him bogus commissions every time a new camera system was installed in Chicago.
"I put it in the bank, paid taxes on it and gave the rest to John Bills," O'Malley said. "A lot of times he would tell me what he wanted, most usually over the phone.
"Sometimes he would email 'let's get together for lunch and discuss the 8-page speed results,'" O'Malley said. "That indicated to me he wanted $8,000."
The bribery scheme was first disclosed in the Chicago Tribune in 2012 after the newspaper obtained an internal Redflex memo that detailed the plot.
In exchange for the bribes, Bills is charged with steering multimillion-dollar contracts to Redflex, coaching executives, allowing them to help write contract specifications, sabotaging competitors and growing the system to the largest camera network in the country.
Bills' attorney will cross-examine O'Malley when the trial resumes Thursday at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.
According to O'Malley, he met Bills at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on the South Side in 2002. Bills later set him up with a consulting job with Redflex, he said.
O'Malley recalled from the witness stand going to the interview at Redflex headquarters in Phoenix.
"They said they were looking for someone in the $30,000 range," O'Malley testified. "And I said that wasn't me, that I was looking for something more like $60,000.
"They excused themselves for 15 minutes and came back and told me they could work with that."
O'Malley said it was Bills who negotiated for his lucrative commissions based on every new camera system installed.
Fardon spent much of the afternoon showing jurors the email communications, receipts and spreadsheet summaries of all the expenditures O'Malley said he made "at the request of John Bills."
Those included several checks totaling $5,500 to the vaunted 13th Ward political organization of powerful House Speaker Michael Madigan.
Bills rose through the ranks at City Hall as part of Madigan's patronage army, serving as a top precinct captain and fundraiser for the longtime Democratic politician.
Fardon questioned O'Malley about emails he wrote to his bosses at Redflex about meetings Bills had with Madigan and former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley when Redflex was working to expand the red light camera program to include speed cameras.
"Absolutely," O'Malley said about Redflex's interest in speed cameras. "It was a tremendous amount of money."
He said Redflex was working to take care of Bills even after he retired in 2011, by orchestrating work with a Chicago consulting firm it hired to help get the speed camera contract.
"He went to work at Resolute (Consulting)," O'Malley said of Bills. "Resolute ran the campaign for the new mayor, Mayor Emanuel," he testified. "They have good connections to the new mayor, so Redflex decided to hire them to increase their connections to him."
Resolute owner Greg Goldner has acknowledged hiring Bills to work for a Redflex-funded nonprofit organization but has denied any wrongdoing connected with the contract. Goldner has political ties to both Rahm Emanuel and Daley. He was Emanuel's campaign manager in his first run for Congress.
Earlier Wednesday, Bills' attorney, Nishay Sanan, opened his defense by giving jurors a primer on the Chicago Way. He maintained that Bills didn't have the clout to orchestrate a scheme of such magnitude.
"In the city of Chicago, if you are going to bribe someone, you go to an alderman, you go to a president, you go to the mayor," Sanan told jurors in his opening statement. "You go to someone who has the power to do it.
"John Bills did not have the ability, the power, the control, the influence or the leverage to direct that contract to Redflex," he said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Storino told jurors that Bills indeed wielded the power at City Hall to pull off the decadelong conspiracy.
"This is a case about public corruption," Storino said. "It's a case of a high-level city official who had power, who violated the public trust for one reason, and that reason was greed to line his own pockets.
"This case is not about red light cameras, whether or not they are good or bad, whether or not they are effective or ineffective," he said. "It's about a city process that was corrupted and exploited by a greedy public official."
But even as he tried to separate the charges against Bills from jurors' opinions on the unpopular cameras, he also asked that they consider that Bills' scheme resulted in more cameras and more traffic tickets.
"His commission structure was specifically tied to the number of cameras installed around the city," Storino said.
Sanan said the entire case against Bills relies on the jury judging the credibility of O'Malley and two other alleged co-conspirators who are testifying after cutting deals with prosecutors.
"At the end of this case, they will have failed," Sanan said. "Not only will they have failed, but they will have failed miserably because they have to rely on three liars."
dkidwell@tribpub.com
Twitter @DavidKidwell1
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for commenting.
Your comment will be held for approval by the blog owner.