FBI raids office of D.C. CTO, Obama appointee

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0309/FBI_raids_office_of_DC_CTO_Obama_appointee.html?showall

[rquoter]Federal agents this morning are searching the office Washington, D.C.'s Chief Technology Officer.

The search of the office at 1 Judiciary Square is part of "an ongoing investigation," said a spokeswoman for the FBI's D.C. Field Office, Lindsay Gotwin, said.

She said two men, Yusuf Acar and Sushil Bansal, had been arrested.

Acar is an information security officer who was also, according to online requests for proposals, responsible for contracting. Bansal is listed on the city's procurement website as the CEO of the Advanced Integrated Technologies Corporation, which was awarded two technology contracts last year worth a total of $350,000.

The Washington Post and WTOP Radio report that the men are being held on bribery charges.

The outgoing Chief Technology Officer, Vivek Kundra, was appointed last week Chief Information Officer by the Obama administration. His last day at the city government office was March 4, a spokeswoman for D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, Leslie Kershaw, said. He was appointed to the Washington post in 2007, and held it when Bansal's contract was awarded.

"We know the FBI is over there but that's all we know," said a staffer in the D.C. CTO's office, Mario Field, who was working from a separate location. Another source familiar with the raid said the FBI had sent all staffers other than senior executives home for the day. WTOP reported that agents are searching the 9th and 10th floors of the building.

A White House spokesman had no immediate comment.

D.C. mayor's spokeswoman Kershaw said, "Our office has been alerted of FBI's being at CTO office, but we cannot comment until it's over and we get more details."

No one answered a phone listed in Acar's name[/rquoter]

the Great Vetting Disaster looks set to continue.

 

i spun nothing- that's politico's headline, not mine. and they definitely worked there with obama' appointee as their boss, so the connection is highly relevant.

 

Kundra is on leave after raid.

[rquoter]Source: Obama official on leave after FBI raids
Source: Obama technology official on leave after FBI raids his old DC office, arrests 2

Devlin Barrett and Nedra Pickler, Associated Press Writers
Thursday March 12, 2009, 6:38 pm EDT
Buzz up! Print
WASHINGTON (AP) -- 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.

One contract involved providing computer support for the city's Department of Motor Vehicles. The company also was given a contract to upgrade the city's human resources computer records and sold virus detection software to the city.

In August Bansal was named entrepreneur of the year by the Association of Indians in America.

An FBI affidavit supporting the arrest warrants indicates that several other businesses and individuals were involved in the alleged schemes, but the other people are identified only by their initials.

The FBI worked with another employee in the city's technology office, who was in on the scheme and secretly recorded conversations with Acar and Bansal as part of the investigation.

In 2007, federal investigators uncovered a massive embezzlement scheme in the city's tax office.

Men and women dressed in suits and wearing latex gloves could be seen entering and leaving the glass-enclosed lobby of the Office of the Chief Technology Officer on Thursday afternoon.

Even as the raid was taking place, Kundra was giving a speech at FOSE, an annual government technology expo. Kundra said part of his focus is to change the way the government buys technologies from vendors.[/rquoter]