We may need a banana republicans police blotter, too.
The mayor of the city of Hawthorne has been charged with two counts of perjury.
[Daniel] Juarez is the second mayor of the South Bay city to be charged by the L.A. County district attorney’s public corruption unit and the third member of the council in recent years.
The charges against Juarez allege that he took a $2,000 cash contribution from the manager of a Gold’s Gym in Hawthorne, and didn’t report it. This was in 2010:
The gym closed in 2012 after filing for bankruptcy protection and defaulting on a $2.5-million loan from the city.
Which makes me say, “Gold’s Gym needed a $2.5 million loan from a municipal government to open? They couldn’t get a private loan? Doesn’t that…I don’t know…tell you something?”
Meanwhile, L.A. County Assessor John Noguez has been charged, along with two other gentlemen, with taking bribes to lower property taxes.
Last year, distric attorney’s investigators began probing secret, improper tax breaks granted to more than 100 wealthy Westside property owners since Noguez’s election. They also started looking into complaints from assessor’s office employees who claimed they were under pressure to lower property taxes for clients of prominent Noguez contributors, like [campaign contributor Ramin] Salari.
Salari, also indicted, allegedly “loaned” Noguez $180,000, and contributed $5,000 to his campaign. The indictment apparently alleges that the contribution and the “loans” were actually bribes; supposedly, bank records show that repayment of the “loans” started after the LAT began asking questions.
(The third person indicted is Mark McNeil, Noguez’s aide.)
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2012 at 4:58 pm and is filed under California Über Alles, Clippings, Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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