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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| Obama tech aide takes leave |
| 2009-03-13 |
| An aide to President Barack Obama is on leave from his White House job after the FBI raided his old District of Columbia government office Thursday, arresting a city employee and a technology consultant on corruption charges, a White House official said. The charges were lodged against the two men at a federal court hearing as the FBI finished searching the city's technology office, which was led until recently by Obama's new computer chief, Vivek Kundra. Kundra is on leave from his White House job until further details of the case become known, according to a White House official speaking on condition of anonymity because the official did not want to publicly discuss personnel matters. At the court hearing, Yusuf Acar, the acting chief security officer in the city's technology office, was ordered held without bond pending a hearing Tuesday. Prosecutors said $70,000 in cash was found during a search of Acar's Washington home and that he posed a serious flight risk. Technology consultant Sushil Bansal of Dunn Loring, Va., was released but was ordered not to conduct overseas financial transactions or leave the Washington metropolitan area. Bansal is due back in court on April 21, and prosecutors said they were hopeful that a plea agreement could be reached in his case. Acar worked under Kundra, Obama's pick to coordinate federal computer systems. Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs would not say whether the White House knew the investigation was under way when it named Kundra last week, but called the case "a serious matter." Mafara Hobson, a spokeswoman for Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty, said she was "very confident" Kundra is not a target of the investigation. Bansal's lawyer, David Lamb declined to comment. It was not immediately clear who would represent Acar in the case. Acar, a 40-year-old native of Turkey, had a $127,468-a-year position purchasing the city's computer equipment and lining up contract workers for numerous city agencies, according to court documents. Authorities say Acar and Bansal, along with others, defrauded the government through a variety of schemes, including billing the city for items that were never delivered and "ghost" contract employees who did not work. The scheme involved Acar approving falsified bills and splitting the money with vendors including Bansal, who submitted them, court documents alleged. Bansal, a native of India who turns 42 next week, is a former city employee and the founder and chief executive of Advanced Integrated Technologies Corp. The company has offices in Washington and India and did more than $13 million in business with the District of Columbia government in the past five years, according to court documents. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #5 I had quite a chuckle over this when I got the news yesterday morning. I work for a tech company in DC and actually met with Kundra shortly after the DC property tax refund embezzlement scandal (to the tune of $50m+) from about a year ago. Clearly, the DC gov was in need of better financial control and disbursement oversight. My company sells software that helps with this. But he dismissed the issue and us by saying that no technology could have deterred or detected the fraud. Excuse me? Your supposed to be the tech guy and you don't think there's a tech solution to what is essentially a data visibility problem? It was at that point that my antennae went up on this guy. I came away from that meeting with the sense that he is the ultimate self-marketer. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if he were involved with all of this nonsense somehow or was such a ineffective manager that he had no clue what was going on right under his nose. |
| Posted by: eltoroverde 2009-03-13 19:45 |
| #4 Right out of a Cook County Illinois Democratic Party play book. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2009-03-13 08:08 |
| #3 Dammit, Can't he find anyone in the Dem party, NOT "Dirty". Or, at least, smart enough not to get caught. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2009-03-13 07:25 |
| #2 Dammit, Can't he find anyone in the Dem party, NOT "Dirty". |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2009-03-13 02:15 |
| #1 I believe "careening" is the apt phrase... |
| Posted by: Hyper 2009-03-13 00:54 |