FuzzyLumpkins
02-04-2018, 06:27 AM
http://www.businessinsider.com/texas-official-allegedly-took-bribe-when-hiring-border-wall-contractor-2018-2
The kickback scheme was allegedly hashed out over weeknight drinks at a steakhouse in a border county in south Texas.
Amid surf and turf and expensive scotch, a Hidalgo County official said he would meet with contractors in the clubby confines of the restaurant in a strip mall in McAllen.
There, Godfrey Garza Jr., director of the county’s drainage district, cajoled company executives to hire a firm owned by his family in exchange for a cut of lucrative construction contracts, according to new documents filed in state district court in Hidalgo County.
The target of the plan: a $232 million project funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the county to build a border fence and rehabilitate aging dirt levees along the Rio Grande.
The previously unreported details of Garza’s alleged scheme emerged last week in an ongoing lawsuit in which the county has sued companies owned by Garza, his wife and their two sons for fraud during the construction of the combined levee-fence. The new filings also implicate one of Texas’ most powerful engineering firms, Dannenbaum Engineering, as a participant in the scheme.
“[T]he deeper we look into this case the more troubling facts we discover,” said Michael J. Blanchard, the county’s lawyer. “As evidence develops, it is increasingly clear that the wrongdoing in this case rose beyond the level of simple fraud.”
Garza has denied any wrongdoing and has countersued the county. A spokesman for Dannenbaum repeated the company’s insistence that any claims of misconduct were false.
The new allegations come a month after an investigation by The Texas Tribune and ProPublica revealed that Homeland Security poured more than $174 million into the project while largely ignoring safeguards to protect taxpayer funds.
The levee-fence in Hidalgo County was erected as part of a race to build 654 miles of barriers between the U.S. and Mexico a decade ago. Today, of course, President Donald Trump is pushing to spend billions of dollars to build a more imposing and lengthy border barrier across much of the entire U.S./Mexico border, an aim he is likely to spell out again in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address.
To speed construction, the agency issued a grant to the county that called for “substantial federal involvement” in the project. But the investigation found that agency officials did not know Garza’s family were hired as subcontractors on the project.
The agency also failed to act aggressively after a whistleblower came forward to report concerns over Garza’s employment contract with the county, which called for him to receive 1.5 percent of any money spent to build the levee-fence project.
Garza and his company, Integ, earned $3.7 million as a result of the contract, while his children’s firm, Valley Data Collection Specialists, received at least $1.6 million in subcontracts, court records show. Federal law generally bans entering into contracts with commissions and prohibits potential conflicts of interest.
The broad outlines of the claims against Garza and his family were made last year in a lawsuit by the county to recover public funds.
The latest complaint adds new details by portraying Garza as the mastermind of a scheme in which Dannenbaum, the project manager, and other contractors knowingly participated. It says the Garzas and Dannenbaum demonstrated “a pattern of racketeering activity,” describing payments Dannenbaum made to Valley Data as “bribes.” It also alleges that Valley Data didn’t do much, if any, work on the project but instead served as “a kickback vehicle and money laundering machine.”
The lawsuit also claims that Garza didn’t do the construction work for which he made his multimillion-dollar commission.
The filing is based in part on a deposition given last week by Garza in which he described regular informal meetings with county contractors and elected officials at the McAllen steakhouse.
It also follows a recent deposition by Louis H. Jones, the head of Dannenbaum’s South Texas operations, in which he invoked his right to avoid self-incrimination in response to more than 100 questions from county lawyers about Garza and the levee-fence project.
The kickback scheme was allegedly hashed out over weeknight drinks at a steakhouse in a border county in south Texas.
Amid surf and turf and expensive scotch, a Hidalgo County official said he would meet with contractors in the clubby confines of the restaurant in a strip mall in McAllen.
There, Godfrey Garza Jr., director of the county’s drainage district, cajoled company executives to hire a firm owned by his family in exchange for a cut of lucrative construction contracts, according to new documents filed in state district court in Hidalgo County.
The target of the plan: a $232 million project funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the county to build a border fence and rehabilitate aging dirt levees along the Rio Grande.
The previously unreported details of Garza’s alleged scheme emerged last week in an ongoing lawsuit in which the county has sued companies owned by Garza, his wife and their two sons for fraud during the construction of the combined levee-fence. The new filings also implicate one of Texas’ most powerful engineering firms, Dannenbaum Engineering, as a participant in the scheme.
“[T]he deeper we look into this case the more troubling facts we discover,” said Michael J. Blanchard, the county’s lawyer. “As evidence develops, it is increasingly clear that the wrongdoing in this case rose beyond the level of simple fraud.”
Garza has denied any wrongdoing and has countersued the county. A spokesman for Dannenbaum repeated the company’s insistence that any claims of misconduct were false.
The new allegations come a month after an investigation by The Texas Tribune and ProPublica revealed that Homeland Security poured more than $174 million into the project while largely ignoring safeguards to protect taxpayer funds.
The levee-fence in Hidalgo County was erected as part of a race to build 654 miles of barriers between the U.S. and Mexico a decade ago. Today, of course, President Donald Trump is pushing to spend billions of dollars to build a more imposing and lengthy border barrier across much of the entire U.S./Mexico border, an aim he is likely to spell out again in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address.
To speed construction, the agency issued a grant to the county that called for “substantial federal involvement” in the project. But the investigation found that agency officials did not know Garza’s family were hired as subcontractors on the project.
The agency also failed to act aggressively after a whistleblower came forward to report concerns over Garza’s employment contract with the county, which called for him to receive 1.5 percent of any money spent to build the levee-fence project.
Garza and his company, Integ, earned $3.7 million as a result of the contract, while his children’s firm, Valley Data Collection Specialists, received at least $1.6 million in subcontracts, court records show. Federal law generally bans entering into contracts with commissions and prohibits potential conflicts of interest.
The broad outlines of the claims against Garza and his family were made last year in a lawsuit by the county to recover public funds.
The latest complaint adds new details by portraying Garza as the mastermind of a scheme in which Dannenbaum, the project manager, and other contractors knowingly participated. It says the Garzas and Dannenbaum demonstrated “a pattern of racketeering activity,” describing payments Dannenbaum made to Valley Data as “bribes.” It also alleges that Valley Data didn’t do much, if any, work on the project but instead served as “a kickback vehicle and money laundering machine.”
The lawsuit also claims that Garza didn’t do the construction work for which he made his multimillion-dollar commission.
The filing is based in part on a deposition given last week by Garza in which he described regular informal meetings with county contractors and elected officials at the McAllen steakhouse.
It also follows a recent deposition by Louis H. Jones, the head of Dannenbaum’s South Texas operations, in which he invoked his right to avoid self-incrimination in response to more than 100 questions from county lawyers about Garza and the levee-fence project.