LAZ Parking, the company that manages Chicago's parking meter assets, fired an executive of its company this past week after learning he was under investigation for accepting kickbacks from the CEO of a company the firm awarded a contract to supply LAZ Parking with the smart meters it uses in Chicago. The LAZ Parking executive allegedly accepted $90,000 in kickbacks from the company by having payments funneled to a consulting firm set up by the executive's wife. The executive, who has not been named, was fired after a Chicago reporter learned he was under investigation by federal authorities and called the company for comment.
News reports did not identify the company executive responsible for paying bribes to the LAZ executive; however, other news reports seem to suggest it may be a Florida businessman, George R. Levey, who pleaded guilty in April to paying bribes to Portland, Oregon's former parking manager. Portland's former parking manager, Ellis McCoy, was reportedly cooperating in an ongoing federal investigation when Levey pleaded guilty. Levey, who owns Cale Parking Systems, paid made more than $56,000 in phony consulting payments to a consulting business McCoy set up, as well as paid for golf, gambling and vacation trips for him. McCoy had been arrested by federal authorities four years ago.
Don't think this sort of thing isn't going on in Indianapolis because it is. The difference is that we don't have federal prosecutors who will dig as deeply into the weeds as they do in other cities to uncover public corruption. Federal investigators and the news media ignore whistle blowers while building those up who are defrauding the public as respectable civic leaders. Bribes, payoffs and kickbacks are all a part of the way business is conducted here as vendors throughout the nation are well aware. The LAZ Parking investigation is intriguing because here we have the feds investigating bribes paid to a privatize operator's employees when we can't even get deals involving actual public officials investigated here in Indianapolis.
1 comment:
The corrupt Greg Ballard and his corrupt admin have copied so much from Chicago- such as the ACS PARKING METER SCAM that chains Indianapolis, Her visitors, and Her As Yet Unborn to a horrid, crony Fifty Year Slave Relationship- just how long will it be until we read in Advance Indiana that city employees are charged with taking kickbacks from parking meter business, those damn foolish (AND ILLEGAL) Vision Fleet electric toy cars, selling the Old City Hall in crony business deals, idiotic rent-a-bikes, the (mercifully) as yet unbuilt criminal justice center (but already it's slushed thousands to the rigged bidders), and phony from the get-go land banks (oh, wait....)? And Chuckie Brewer publicly stated he has every intention of continuing the "work" corrupt Greg Ballard began from day one of his corrupt mayoral terms.
That legal Americans by far now "expect" politicians to be crooked shows how far the bar has sunk. And we have one of the lowest bars ever as Mayor. Greg Ballard should be charged with multiple criminal offenses... some which can be proved from the paperwork of his own administration... and Greg Ballard should spend a significant time behind bars. And attorneys like DB and TJ should be his cell mates. Unless TO is the judge... just one of the political chess pieces DB was able to "elected".
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