The Los Angeles Times reports former Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Ray Chan is at the center of a federal corruption probe into city hall.
Federal investigators have not publicly named Chan, but they say the dates of the probe into a deputy mayor’s alleged dealings with a developer coincide with the employment history of Chan, the Times reported.
Federal investigators allege a deputy mayor is accused of taking money from a real estate consultant to help push a project through City Hall. Chan has not been charged with a crime.
LAist reports the FBI served a search warrant on Google in July 2018 asking for information in Chan’s Gmail account. Chan is also the former head of the Los Angeles Dept of Building and Safety. He retired that year, but served the following year as Los Angeles Deputy Mayor of Economic Development until 2017.
The warrant became public when the deputy director of on the Program on Extremism, Seamus Hughes, tweeted the warrant out in January 2019.
Chan did not respond to the Times request for comment.
Last week, a Chan business associate, George Chiang, pleaded guilty in a pay for play scheme. Prosecutors say a Chinese real estate company bribed a Los Angeles City Councilperson as part of a development deal. Under a plea bargain, Chiang will fully cooperate in the corruption probe.
“If a councilman asked Ray, ‘What does two and two equal?’ he would answer by saying, ‘What do you want it to equal?’ ” Robert Ovrom,who headed the building deparment before Chan, said to the Times.
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