BUSTED: Cudahy Councilman Osvaldo Conde and Mayor David M. Silva.
A criminal complaint filed in United States District Court alleges that the three officials from the city in southeastern Los Angeles County accepted a total of $17,000 in cash bribes earlier this year. According to the affidavit in support of the complaint, the three officials requested and accepted cash payments in exchange for supporting the opening of a “medical marijuana” store in the city.
The three officials arrested this morning are:
Osvaldo Conde, 50, a member of the Cudahy City Council, who allegedly accepted two separate bribe payments;
David Silva, 61, the current mayor of Cudahy; and
Angel Perales, 43, who runs the Code Enforcement Division of the Cudahy Community Services Department (and is also the head of the Cudahy Parks and Recreation Department).
Conde, Silva, and Perales are expected to make their initial court appearances this afternoon in United States District Court in downtown Los Angeles.
“The stain left by public corruption is indelible, extending beyond any individual case because of the general erosion of public confidence in government,” said United States Attorney André Birotte, Jr. “The allegations in this case describe a corrosive and freewheeling attitude among certain officials in the city of Cudahy. The Department of Justice will aggressively investigate and pursue cases like this to ensure that the integrity of good government is protected and preserved.”
FBI Assistant Director in Charge Steven M. Martinez stated, “The alleged participation by multiple public officials in a bribery scheme is unfair to the residents of Cudahy. This case will send the right message to corrupt public officials and is a step toward restoring honest stewardship to the city of Cudahy.”
The affidavit summarizes the bribery allegations: “On the afternoon of February 28, 2012, following weeks of bribe solicitations and related discussions made during recorded meetings and telephone calls, Conde, Silva, and Perales met an FBI confidential informant at the El Potrero nightclub in Cudahy, California. The three Cudahy city officials accepted a total of $15,000 cash as bribe payments. Later that evening, Conde met the confidential informant to receive an additional $2,000 cash as a bribe.”
The 143-page affidavit, which was unsealed this morning, describes an investigation in which federal law enforcement agents recorded a number of conversations with Cudahy city officials. During those conversations, the city officials explained that the Cudahy City Council planned to approve only one or two permits for marijuana stores in Cudahy. According to the affidavit, Perales sought to broker an arrangement between an FBI informant and city officials in which the informant would make cash payments in exchange for the officials supporting a request for one of the permits.
Perales explained to the informant that “[t]here are three parts to this game”—Conde, Silva, and himself, according to the affidavit. Perales also allegedly told the informant that “these guys [Conde and Silva] are not your typical…council people. [T]hey’ve dealt with, uh, you know, people that throw money down.”
Prior to a meeting with Conde and Silva at a Pico Rivera restaurant, Perales instructed the informant how he should broach the topic of paying the bribes and later instructed the informant on how to present the bribes, specifying that the payments should be in cash only, according to the affidavit.
A criminal complaint contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in court.
The charge of bribery carries a statutory maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison.
This case is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Smoking.
Can anyone say selective enforcement?
And can a plant that has so many useful applications be our enemy, and not the Truth hating corporate whores who operate a crackhouse called Congress?
For far more detailed information kindly google any of the following:
“The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine/Crack Epidemic” by former DEA agent Michael Levine
“Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion” by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb
“Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press” by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair
“The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade” by Alfred W. McCoy
“The Underground Empire: Where Crime and Governments Embrace” by James Mills
“Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA” by Terry Reed, (a former Air Force Intelligence operative) and John Cummings (a former prize-winning investigative reporter at N.Y Newsday).
Every single Prohibitionist is a willing servant of tyranny and hate, having but one sole purpose – to make the rest of us suffer their putrid legacy of incalculable waste and destruction. Hand in hand with a Corporate controlled, propaganda-spewing mass-media machine, they continually connive to ensure that the inevitable consequences of their ‘not fit for purpose’ policy (the vast increase in corruption, mayhem, economic and moral decay) are all attributed to the prohibited substances themselves rather than the actual obvious and historically proven cause: the very prohibition of these substances.
Prohibition is not simply just a ‘War on Reason’ it is a dire threat to the very fabric of our nation, a slow but relentless degradation (death by a zillion cuts) of all our cherished national institutions, inclusive the nightmare of new and far more deadlier substitute-concoctions (bathtub-meth, crack-cocaine, crocodile-heroin-ersatz, and synthetic marijuana) that will leave us crippled for numerous generations.
That’s a really nice rant, Malcolm, but this story is less about medpot and more about allegations of government corruption and bribery.
For me, the medpot angle is tertiary at best.
Of primary concern for me are the allegations of criminal misconduct and of secondary concern is another question: Over what other matters may these officials have also engaged in a criminal conspiracy as they are alleged to have done here?
Was this their only attempt to misuse their positions in government or is this just the first time it came to someone’s attention?