Former LA deputy mayor gets 12 years in City Hall corruption scheme

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A former Los Angeles deputy mayor for economic development was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison on Friday for his pivotal role in helping a city councilman run a pay-to-play bribery scheme for wealthy real-estate developers to get projects in downtown LA approved.

Raymond Chan, 68, an immigrant from China who had worked for the city for more than 30 years, expressed his gratitude to the dozens of people in the packed courtroom who had come to support him during the two-hour sentencing hearing before U.S. District Judge John Walter.

“I have been convicted, and I take full responsibility for my conviction,” Chan told the judge, a George W. Bush appointee.

While acknowledging Chan’s many years of exemplary public service, Walter rejected his bid for a more lenient sentence of 33 months. Public corruption has a corrosive effect on government institutions and undermines the public’s trust in their government, the judge said, and a lenient sentence would send the wrong message.

“The sentence must be sufficient enough not to depreciate the seriousness of the crimes,” the judge said.

Chan was the last defendant to go on trial in the Justice Department’s takedown of a sprawling corruption scheme run by former City Councilman José Huizar and his inner circle.

Huizar had originally been scheduled to go on trial alongside Chan but chose to plead guilty instead. In January, Walter sentenced him to 13 years in prison.

In a separate trial, Walter also convicted two real-estate developers. Last month, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the conviction of Chinese developer Shen Zhen New World, whose billionaire owner had treated Huizar to more than a dozen lavish, all-expenses-paid trips to Las Vegas — including complimentary gambling chips and prostitutes — to get his support for a planned skyscraper in downtown LA.

Among other charges, Chan was convicted for being the middleman that introduced the Chinese developer to Huizar.

He was also found guilty of facilitating a $600,000 bribe from the developer to Huizar to settle a sexual-harassment lawsuit that could have undermined his reelection to the city council. His exit from city council would have rendered him unable to help the developer get his project through the city’s approval process.

Chan’s attorney, Michael Freedman, stressed at the hearing that his client was a fundamentally different person than Huizar. He said Chan’s desire to help others and his naivety led him to trust the wrong people.

“Mr. Chan is a hometown hero — he’s actually what makes Los Angeles great,” Freedman said, referencing Chan’s work as longtime head of LA’s Department of Building and Safety, where he helped along numerous projects by both large and small developers.

“He dedicated his life to the city,” Freedman said.

But in explaining his sentence, the judge cited a letter from the city attorney. The letter said that — while Chan once had “a sterling reputation” among coworkers — they were shocked by his betrayal and corruption.

Arguing for a 17-plus-year prison sentence, Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Har scoffed at Chan’s suggestion that his desire to help had somehow clouded his judgment and that Huizar had pulled the fleece over his eyes.

She also pointed out that, through a secret business partnership, Chan received hundreds of thousands of dollars from one developer while he still worked for the city to help get a project approved. “That’s not accepting responsibility,” Har said: “That’s shifting the blame.”

The judge found that Chan had an aggravating role in the corruption scheme, noting that he was significantly involved in all aspects of it and that Huizar never said no to Chan. The judge also explained that Chan’s destruction of evidence — including deleting thousands of texts with Huizar and others, marking incriminating documents as attorney-client privileged when they weren’t, and attempting to influence witnesses — warranted an enhanced sentence.

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